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THE FACT OF SIN 


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THE FACT OF SIN 


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By 

’ 

Rev. N.‘ Wallace Stroup, M. A. 

Author of “ The New Switzerland.” 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 





Copyright, 1908, 

By Jennings and Graham 


JBRARY of CONGRESS 
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CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

THE FOREWORD, 7 

I. THE FACT DEFINED, - 13 

part I 

The Fact in Poetry and Philosophy 

II. IN POETRY, 27 

III. IN EVOLUTION, 71 

IV. IN PHILOSOPHY, 107 

part II 

The Fact in History and Religion 

V. IN THE ETHNIC FAITHS, ... 129 

VI. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, - - - - 153 

VII. IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, - 165 

part III 

The Fact in Theology and Thought 

VIII. THE ORIGIN, 177 

IX. THE NATURE, 195 

X. THE CHARACTERISTICS, - - - - 209 

XI. THE TRANSMISSION, 229 

XII. THE RELATIONS, 247 

XIII. THE CONCLUSION, 291 


5 



FOREWORD 


The subject of this book is one of the 
most important in theological thought. 
“The fact of sin” is interwoven in every 
discussion involving the doctrine of the sal- 
vation of men. It lies at the basis of both 
the Old and the New Testament teaching, 
and any system of Christian thought which 
excludes it from consideration is, to that 
extent at least, defective. Sin and redemp- 
tion are the two great discussions around 
which the formulated thought of the cen- 
turies in relation to Christianity has gath- 
ered. It is ineradically interwoven in the 
Holy Scriptures, and any interpretation 
which excludes this great fact can not be ac- 
cepted by the Christian theologian. The 
Old Testament abounds not only in the state- 
ment but in the illustration of sin. The 
words “sin” and “sinners” are frequent in 
the Scriptures. 


7 


8 


Foreword 


There is no one of the sacred writers 
who has given sin more elaborate treatment 
than the Apostle Panl. Two remarkable pas- 
sages at once attest this. One is Romans 
v, 12: “Wherefore, as by one man sin en- 
tered into the world, and death by sin: and 
so death passed npon all men, for that all 
have sinned.’ ’ Again (1 Timothy i, 15) the 
apostle says, “It is a faithful saying and 
worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ 
came into the world to save sinners.’ ’ The 
statement of men as sinners is a distinct con- 
ception of the divine revelation. Error, 
wrong, disharmony with one’s conditions, 
legal disobedience, a condition which is to be 
righted in some way, is found in a greater or 
less degree in all religious thought. But the 
conception of sin as a violation of God’s law, 
as antagonism to God’s holiness, as a condi- 
tion requiring penalty from which there must 
be deliverance by divine power, is peculiar 
to Christian theology. 

The obscuration of sin in these times is 
one of our most dangerous tendencies. With- 
out this sense there is little room or need for 


Foreword 


9 


repentance and, consequently, for seeking de- 
liverance. It has ceased to be talked about 
and is rarely preached about. Sin lies in the 
nature of man and also in the acts of man. 
Men commit sins because men are sinners. 
As a nature it is a tendency, as an act it is 
a transgression. As a nature it is a deprav- 
ity, and as an act it is guilt. Both, accord- 
ing to the Cbistian conception, need the 
divine atonement and divine rescue. 

This book is one that should command 
attention both because of its subject and be- 
cause of its treatment. The author has mas- 
tered the literature on the subject and has 
entered into its deep meaning and recognized 
the vital relation of the fact of sin to the 
divine plan of salvation. The unbiblical con- 
ceptions of the origin of sin are clearly stated 
and the Biblical position defended. Poetry, 
Science, Philosophy, and the Scriptures are 
freely drawn upon for illustration. Over 
against the fact of sin the author places the 
fact of holiness and unfolds the transition of 
the human soul from sin to holiness through 
the faith of Jesus Christ. 


10 


Foreword 


To many minds it will be a new revelation 
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and an 
inspiration to turn to God for deliverance. 
The clearness of style, thoroughness of dis- 
cussion, and the importance of the subject 
commend this book as worthy of attention 
and study on the part both of the Christian 
layman and the Christian minister. We cor- 
dially commend it as a timely and valuable 
contribution to an essential doctrine of the 
Holy Scriptures too much neglected in our 
time. In its careful study the reader will find 
intellectual illumination and spiritual up- 
lifting. 

Peesident HENRV A. BUTTZ, D. D., LL. D. 

Drew Theological Seminary , 

Madison, N. J. 






























I 

THE FACT DEFINED 
















“The right knowledge of sin is of supreme importance.” 

— Calvin. 


“Every-day experience teaches us that the right knowl- 
edge of sin is as rare as it is difficult.” 

— Van Oosterzee. 


“ All the religions of the world recognize the sinfulness 
of man. Even the Hindus, whose teachers tell us that there 
is no sin, teach the doctrine of transmigration, or that the 
result of wrong-doing in this world is condemnation to end- 
less cycles of suffering in lower forms of existence.” 

— Amory H. Bradford. 


THE FACT DEFINED 


The purpose of the following pages is 
twofold: first, we desire to present a short 
review of the Fact of Sin as it has existed in 
the thought of the leading men and systems 
of the centuries, and, secondly, that we may 
recover to the fact the emphasis which is 
demanded in our message to the modern 
mind. We can not fail to know that the need 
of the hour is a vivid conception of the po- 
tency and reality of sin. Gladstone voiced 
the true expression of every Christian heart 
when he said that — 

“The great want in modern life is a deep 
sense of sin; it is wanting in our sermons, 
wanting everywhere. Sin can neither be de- 
nied nor accounted unreal. There is nothing 
which at the present time needs more to be 
insisted on in theology and in gospel preach- 
ing than the objectivity and reality of guilt. 
It is not a subjective illusion, which we should 
be taught to disregard in view of God’s in- 
13 


14 


The Fact of Sin 


finite love; it is as real as life or death, a 
gigantic problem for God and man . 9 ’ 

We are living in that which has been 
termed an age of donbt. It is an era of 
materialism and theological unrest. Social- 
ism is invading the common mind. Philan- 
thropy has sought to usurp the place of 
Christianity, but the displacement is only ap- 
parent. That which is inherently dependent 
can not long exist independently. Chris- 
tianity is the eternal source of philanthropy 
and charity. Love of humanity is born of 
love to God. Sin is still persistently present 
and man needs redemption. There can be no 
relief in disregard or denial. The disease 
must be dealt with from within as well as 
from without. 

There must be a regeneration of the na- 
tion as well as of the individual before we 
shall realize the fulfillment of the prophetic 
prayer which foretold the hour when the per- 
fect will of a perfect reigning One should be 
done on earth as in heaven. 

The fact of sin has to do with the whole 
of life — with what we are as well as what 


The Fact Defined 


15 


we do. The inner condition is causal to the 
outward action. In Christian thought the 
fact of sin and the fact of Christ are inti- 
mately related. There is a sense in which 
it may be said that the entrance of sin was 
causal to the Incarnation of the Christ. It 
is divinely true that in a moral world gov- 
erned by a personal Providence, the needs 
arising from the grant of human sovereignty 
are certain to be met by the wisdom and love 
of the Infinite Father. The same love that 
expressed itself in the creation of man as a 
free moral agent, would not fail to make the 
necessary sacrifice to redeem the individual, 
when through an act of disobedience he had 
betrayed the trust of moral freedom. But 
we must not forget that love has its limita- 
tions and that divine holiness must be just. 

The fact of sin determines not only our 
conception of man but also of God. A wrong 
idea of the nature of evil always produces a 
false notion of both humanity and Deity. 
The various systems of philosophy and the- 
ology have been grouped about two widely 
divergent views of sin — the one has been 


16 


The Fact of Sin 


wholly Christian, while the other has been 
largely naturalistic. The one is the child 
of divine revelation, while the other is purely 
of human origin. The former has always 
proved effectual in individual emancipation, 
while the latter has tended to lessen the sense 
of guilt and the consequent necessity of seek- 
ing regeneration and purification. If we are 
to he successful in our advance toward a 
higher plane of social, political, and spiritual 
living, we must not fail to give a large place 
to the fact of sin. 

We find several witnesses to the reality 
of sin aside from that of our own personal 
consciousness. They vary in their under- 
standing and grasp of the subject, but they 
are all of value in our approach toward a 
more perfect conception of the fact. The 
first evidence is that which we gain from 
the inspired genius of the poet, and, though 
not of the highest value, it is still of entranc- 
ing interest to every lover of literature. 
Poetry preceded prose in the formation of 
literature. Philosophy, like poetry, is often 
unable to appreciate the full meaning of that 


The Fact Defined 


17 


which the New Testament portrays in the 
inspired word of spiritual wisdom. The same 
may be said of the ethnic faiths, since they 
have been deprived of the higher revelation 
of Scripture. But in all these systems which 
form a sort of preliminary preparation to 
the complete Christian conception of sin, we 
have a partially revealed moral code, which 
is prophetic of that which came in the full- 
ness of time through Him whose coming made 
sin exceedingly sinful. 

God selected one nation through which 
He presented a concrete example of His plans 
and purposes, and divinely chosen men spoke 
in divers manners as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost; yet all nations and people 
have been imperfectly seeking to reveal an 
inner ideal which • had been divinely im- 
planted and may be said to have been primal. 

The harmony of the existence of evil and 
the theistic conception of the world has ever 
been the enigma of Science. The philosopher 
has attempted to ratify reason, and the 
Christian has sought to satisfy conscience. 
That sin exists is no longer a debatable ques- 


18 


The Fact of Sin 


tion, but its right to exist has always been 
seriously questioned. The atheist denies it 
by shutting out God. The philosopher an- 
nuls it by making it a necessity. The poet 
bemoans its “frightful mien,” yet refers it 
to God. The evolutionist locates it in matter, 
making it a mere infirmity. 

Man’s estimate of sin determines to a 
large degree man’s conception of God. Na- 
tional history is little more than a concrete 
portrayal of man in relation to good and 
evil, showing how the divine purpose is being 
wrought out under human freedom and 
Providence. The moral and spiritual ad- 
vancement of mankind has been attained, not 
by any positive aid of the forces of sin, but 
rather in spite of all its opposition. 

The great need of the hour is a vision of 
sin in all its deep and direful relations to 
the individual and to the Infinite. When 
the sense of sin waned and weakened, and 
indulgences were being sold in the street 
with a priestly promise of absolution for 
a meager penance, then licentiousness be- 
came common and virtue existed only in 


The Fact Defined 


19 


name. The Middle Age was dark and de- 
graded because the Bible had been taken from 
the people, conscience had been deprived 
of a counselor, and sin had ceased to be con- 
sidered sinful. The Reformation was a re- 
turn to spiritual living, which brought a 
changed attitude of men toward evil. The 
people journeyed again toward Sinai and 
Calvary. Conscience found a Liberator, 
truth a Defender, and justice a judgment 
seat. Sin was revealed, and the sinful sought 
a Savior. 

There is no apology to offer for those who 
disclaim any desire to know what sin is, and 
who claim that they are anxious only to get 
rid of it. We agree that the important ques- 
tion is as to remedy, and we hold that Chris- 
tianity alone is remedial. But to explain is 
not to defend or to make void. Research into 
its nature and location is essential to the 
proper application of the remedy. The effi- 
ciency of the pulpit is here determined. The 
minister’s power in convicting and convert- 
ing men is largely dependent on his portrayal 
of sin. As Moody said, “We need to bear 


20 


The Fact of Sin 


down hard on sin.” Wesley, Whitefield, and 
Spurgeon were great emancipators because 
they were great preachers of the terrible 
bondage of evil. 

The declining sense of sin has brought 
peril to evangelism. Our altars are not 
crowded with publicans and sinners crying 
out for mercy. Culture of intellect is taking 
the place of contrition of heart. The Church 
has gained strength financially and intellec- 
tually, but it too often lacks the apostolic 
authority, which is able to say unto men, 
“ Arise.” These conditions are due to the 
materialistic as well as the ultra-idealistic 
tendencies of the age. Modern thought has 
influenced our former conception of the 
origin and nature of sin. Christian Science 
and Theosophy, which are merely remnants 
of Pagan Philosophy, have sought to deny 
everything that looks like sin. They are not 
only false in their logic, hut deceptive in 
origin and principle, and utterly unworthy 
the serious consideration of Christian schol- 
arship. Pantheism would have us believe 
that all is good because all is God. False 


The Fact Defined 


21 


optimism, often blind to the individnal ele- 
ment in security and perpetuity, exclaims: 

“ God is in His heaven, 

All ’s right with the world.” 

We seem to have lost that consciousness of 
sin and guilt that voices itself in such words 
as — 

“0, what form of prayer 

Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder! 

That can not be ; since I am still possessed 

Of those effects for which I did the murder.” 

In the above words we have prayer for mercy 
checked by an inner sense of horrid guilt. No 
“gilded hand” is able to shove by justice or 
excuse the awful deed. 

Sin is no superficial thing that can be set 
aside with a sneer. It is the deep and deadly 
poison of eternal death. The present situ- 
ation may be dark, but a better day is dawn- 
ing in the Christian world. The ‘ 4 gay skepti- 
cism” of France and the destructive criti- 
cism of Germany are facing the sane forces 
of a healthy reaction. In the light of the Sun 
of Righteousness we are to behold the black- 
ness of sin. Dress-parade volunteers are be- 


22 


The Fact of Sin 


ing made to realize that the crimson tint of 
self-sacrifice is the true badge of discipleship. 

In this study we hope to present the most 
important theories and by a careful review 
of the evidences reach some tenable position. 
We shall aim to present sin in its true nature. 
When reference is made to natural evil and 
the ethics and philosophy of non-Christian 
religions, it will be merely as an aid to our 
better understanding of moral evil. Our 
final authority will not be conscience, but 
revelation and conscience. An important 
place will be given to the consideration of the 
origin of sin and its mode of transmission, 
but our chief contention will be in present- 
ing the fact of sin as an existent reality. 

The introductory remarks which have 
been made preparatory to the presentation 
of this treatise would be incomplete without 
the acknowledgment of my indebtedness to 
Dr. Olin A. Curtis, who was for three years 
my honored professor of Systematic The- 
ology, to Prof. F. F. Ellinwood, of New York 
University, for two years of study in Com- 
parative Religion, and to Principal A. M. 


The Fact Defined 


23 


Fairbairn, of Mansfield College, Oxford, Eng- 
land, whose lectures and personal suggestions 
I have been privileged to receive. Under their 
instructions my interest in theology has re- 
ceived a new impetus and my preaching has 
gained a new power. It was from their teach- 
ing and lectures that I first realized the im- 
portant place that the fact of sin must have 
in relation to all Christian doctrine. 

The succeeding chapters are not intended 
to present a dogmatic philosophy of moral 
evil, but to be a plain and practical presen- 
tation of an important subject which we con- 
sider to be vitally related to the every-day 
life and experience of the layman as well as 
the theologian. We have no theory to defend 
and no special system of doctrine with which 
we are anxious to harmonize our discussion. 
The Bible, which we consider the only real 
source of what we are pleased to term the 
Christian doctrine of sin, will always be 
taken as the final standard of judgment in 
matters of construction and criticism. The 
message of the following chapters is sent 
forth with the prayer that it may prove as 


24 


The Fact of Sin 


helpful to the reader as it has been to the 
writer in furnishing a solution of the problem 
of sin which may prove satisfactory to the 
intellect when supplemented by the complet- 
ing faith of the heart and intellect. 


II 


THE FACT IN POETRY 


26 


“ And ah for a man to arise in me, 

That the man I am may cease to be." 

— Tennyson. 


“ Two souls are ever striving in my breast, 
Each from the other longing to be free." 

— Goethe. 


“ Law can discover sin, but not remove 
Save by those shadowy expiations weak." 

— Milton. 


“ Daily with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais climb and know it not." 


Lowell. 


POETRY 


Poets are not theologians. They claim 
no special dogma and they trust no treasured 
traditions. It may be said that, though they 
have a small creed, they often possess a large 
Christ. They may ignore botany, but they 
love flowers. They may be indifferent to 
astronomy, but they are ardent admirers of 
“the firmament which showeth His handi- 
work. ’ ’ 

Poets live on vision, and where there is 
no vision poetry perishes. Faith, hope, and 
love constitute the vital life of poetry no less 
than of religion. These, when linked to a 
sincere consecration of truth and virtue, yield 
rich results in the interpretation of the 
deeper problems of life. Dr. Dawson claims 
that ‘ ‘ the power of spiritual apprehension is 
one of the surest signs whereby we know a 
great poet. It is the function of the great 
poet to be a seer and interpreter. He sees 
27 


28 


The Fact of Sin 


farther, deeper, and higher than ordinary 
men, and interprets for the common man 
what he dimly feels hut does not fully ap- 
prehend. It is quite true that the message 
of the poet and the result of his spiritual in- 
sight may not shape with our preconceived 
notions and theories ; but where the spiritual 
insight is sure and real the true poet never 
fails to quicken insight in his reader. ’ ’ This 
statement of an eminent literary critic ought 
to encourage our search for aid among the 
leading poets of all ages. 

The attitude of mind and heart which 
characterized those who journeyed to Em- 
maus was quite in accord with that of our 
modern Christian poets. Coleridge was a 
mystic, Byron a pessimist, while Browning 
was an optimist. They were all artists, but 
not all wore philosophers. Like prophets, 
our poets were born, not made. God sends 
many of his best messages to be translated 
for us by poetic genius. 

In our study of sin we may glean many 
inspired thoughts from the writings of the 
leading poets. Beginning with Homer, we 


The Fact in Poetry 


29 


have a crude and often unconscious theology. 
He was very pessimistic in his idea of man, 
which he once stated thus : 6 ‘ There is nothing 
more wretched than man.” This could not 
hut interfere with his notion of evil. His 
conception of the Deity was a sort of “com- 
bination of all natural tendencies and forces, 
both good and evil.” Sin was little more 
than the following out of evil impulses in- 
herent in nature. Divinity became the re- 
sponsible creator and man the irresponsible 
creature. Sin found its source in the gods 
themselves, and the individual could not con- 
sistently be called a sinner. Evil was merely 
the stumbling of an individual born blind, 
who could not be accounted either a saint or 
a sinner, since he was unmoral or irrespon- 
sible for his action. Zeus was a mysterious 
merging of God and Satan. Guilt was un- 
known and repentance became impossible. 
The best interpretation we can place upon 
his teaching would be to make evil a sort of 
combined failure on the part of the gods and 
men. But, however inconsistent it may ap- 
pear, he still held that “sin deserved death 


30 


The Fact of Sin 


and punishment was a debt due to the gods. ’ * 
The other great poets of Greece — Sophocles, 
Euripides, and .ZEschylus — had a remarkable 
insight into the existence of guilt as a result 
of sin — the moral necessity of punishing 
guilt ; but their ideas were vitiated by a gross 
fatalism. 

Dante and Milton both made sin the cen- 
tral fact of their literary inspiration and 
imagination. Without a vivid conception of 
sin Dante could never have written “The 
Inferno,” nor could Milton have produced 
a “Paradise Lost.” Though our Italian 
genius chose to use the most weird and 
ghastly phrases, still we can not fail to be 
impressed by his portrayal of the final re- 
sults of sin. The underlying principles of 
his great drama are largely correct. That 
the wages of sin are all that we can crowd 
into that strongest of all words “death,” we 
must readily admit, but that it is possible for 
us to classify sins into sharply defined 
groups and to mete out varied degrees of 
punishment to different individuals, is wholly 
speculative. That certain kinds of sins have 


The Fact in Poetry 


31 


their seat more particularly in the emotions 
or the aesthetic nature, and others may be 
more clearly traced to the volitional powers, 
is easily recognized, bnt to limit sin to any one 
of these divisions of the senses is impossible. 
Sin has to do with the whole of personality. 
We find Dante is in harmony with New Tes- 
tament teaching in the emphasis he places 
upon sin as a self-perversion of the will and 
a criminal betrayal of the trust of human 
sovereignty. He is very emphatic in his 
thought of responsibility and guilt. To him 
sin was not “misfortune, disease, or natural 
necessity, but rebellion, crime, and self-de- 
struction.” The punishment of the sinful 
was just as essential to his theodicy as the 
reward of the righteous. 

Dante was the “morning star of the Re- 
naissance, and to him was entrusted the 
vision — that the new culture without the old 
faith would be the mind’s Inferno.” Ruskin 
spoke of him as “the great prophetic expo- 
nent of the heart of the Middle Ages. ’ ’ Rea- 
son and revelation were his two unfailing 


32 


The Fact of Sin 


guides. He may be taken as the fulfillment 
of Tennyson ’s ideal of a poet : 

“ He saw through life and death, through 
good and ill, 

He saw through his own soul, 

The marvel of the everlasting will, 

An open scroll before him lay.” 

We find in the Divine Comedy the most 
thorough and careful analysis of all the 
varied forms of sin that has ever been writ- 
ten. The Purgatorio comprises nine circles, 
and each one is characterized by some one 
dominant sin. That these gradations of pen- 
alty are not in accord with Scripture need not 
concern us here, since we are only seeking 
to interpret the vision as an aid to the study 
of evil. The real theme as expressed in his 
own words is, 4 ‘ Man, as rendered liable by 
ill-desert in the exercise of his free will to 
punishing justice . 9 9 He teaches that there is 
one dominant sin which destroys us, and it 
may be taken as the basis for classification. 
While the sinner may for a time determine 
the degree of his indulgence, he does not 
possess the power to limit his action to one 
form of evil. 


The Fact in Poetry 


33 


The first six circles are given up to those 
who have in a passive sense yielded them- 
selves to carnal sins. Their offense has been 
directed against themselves rather than 
others, and is made to inclnde neglect of the 
sacraments, Inst, gluttony, avarice, discon- 
tent, and heresy. The last would more prop- 
erly be placed by itself as belonging to the 
intellect. The other three are violence, fraud- 
ulent violence, and treachery; a careful dis- 
tinction being made between sin committed 
through sudden impulse or passion and that 
which is the result of deliberate action. 
Those of the latter sort, owing to their 
greater guilt, are consigned to the lowest 
circle of hell. 

Over the gates through which they pass 
into the Inferno are inscribed the following 
words : 

“ Reared by power Divine, 

Supremest wisdom, and Eternal Love, 

All hope abandon ye who enter here.” 

The Inferno is the eternal abiding place of 
the lost. The “grievous suffering and lam- 
entation’ ’ is attributed to “the hopeless- 
3 


34 


The Fact of Sin 


ness of death, their blind existence, and their 
nnmemorable former life, which makes them 
envy every other lot. ” In the first circle we 
behold “the bright school of the loftiest 
poets.’ * These of sin are blameless, but be- 
long to the unbaptized family of great poets 
and philosophers, and they are destined to 
go on “desiring without hope.” Hell is to 
them not so much a place of suffering as of 
loss and endless deprivation. The second 
circle is the abode of the first of actual sin- 
ners and the beginning of torment. They 
are “scourged in the blackness of the hurri- 
cane. 9 9 

“ The stormy blast of hell 
With restless fury drives the spirits on, 

Whirled round and dash’d amain with sore annoy.” 

These in whom lust has swayed their rea- 
son “blaspheme against the good Power in 
heaven . 9 9 The next in order we find the glut- 
tonous. They are tortured by being forced 
to lie in the mire under the ceaseless storm 
of hail, snow, and discolored water. For 
the sin 

“ Of gluttony, damned vice, beneath this rain, 

E’en as thou seest, I with fatigue am worn.” 


The Fact in Poetry 


35 


The same class of souls in Purgatory suf- 
fer pangs of hunger in sight of trees laden 
with fruit. The avaricious, or those who dis- 
torted in mind made no use of their money, 
are punished in a manner indicative of their 
earthy existence. They who on earth had 
burdened others to satisfy their selfish greed 
are now in endless strife and violence made 
to roll backward and forward heavy weights 
by the main force of their breasts. The strife 
is suggestive of their commercial occupation, 
while the enslaving service is the price of 
their earthly ease and luxury. As a further 
mark of his disapproval of this sin, he has 
effaced all traces of recognition. 

The souls of those whom anger overcame 
are plunged in a filthy pool of bubbling water 
where in their maddening rage they strangle 
and tear one another in pieces. “A dolorous 
strain they gurgle in their throats, but all 
utterance is denied.’ ’ The heretics are con- 
signed to the city of Dis, where they are to 
suffer — 

“ Eternal fire, 

That inward burns, shews them with ruddy flame 
illumed,” 


36 


The Fact of Sin 


The eighth circle is known as the “Evil 
Budget.’ ’ As though having exhausted the 
divisions, he causes this one to include ten 
pits, into which he dashes as many varieties 
of fraudulent sinners. In one of the most 
dismal gulfs he locates the soul of Pope 
Nicholas. Again he recognizes another, and 
exclaims : 

‘ O, Constantine ! of what a world of evil 
Was that dowry the mother, which first converted 
The pastor of the Church into a rich man ! ” 

The last circle is described as a lake of ice 
where criminal traitors are made to suffer 
all the bitter pangs of cold. In the lowest 
pit of hell he finds the treacherous friar Al- 
berigo and Judas Iscariot. 

The Inferno was the poet’s attempt to 
present such a vivid conception of sin as 
to awaken sleepy consciences and impel men 
to repentance. The portrayal is highly imag- 
inative and realistic. This feature of his 
style, however, was due not only to the per- 
sonal pressure of the burden he was bearing, 
but also to the conviction that the times de- 
manded radical methods. He was the divine 


The Fact in Poetry 


37 


messenger to the spiritual darkness and 
moral deadness of the age. It was a four- 
teenth century message, and therefore not 
amenable to present-day comparison and 
criticism. 

Sin means separation from God in 
Dante ’s comedy, in divine revelation, and in 
human experience. We may also approve the 
central theme, which asserts that so long as 
sin exists hell must be its inevitable destiny. 
The degrees of personal demerit attendant 
upon different sinful deeds, quite logically 
led Dante to conclude that the sufferings of 
the impenitent would likewise vary. The 
standard of judgment used was not always 
in accord with the Christian conception of 
sin. Sin is too often measured by the harm 
done to individuals, rather than its crimi- 
nality in the sight of a Holy God. There is a 
failure in not giving “motive” as rightful 
a place in the characterization of sin as he 
gives to passion and impulse. Vice, which is 
largely a physical evil, should be considered 
less culpable than blasphemy, which is a sin 
against the Holy Spirit. 


38 


The Fact of Sin 


The deepest content in the Christian doc- 
trine of sin is not in its destructive sway over 
men and nations, but is found in the attitude 
of the individual toward divine law. We find 
ourselves in constant danger of over-empha- 
sizing the human results of sin and under- 
valuing the divine element in the composition 
of guilt. The chief value of our study will 
be found in the fact that, to gain any ade- 
quate conception of sin, we must see it not 
only in the present, but in its future aspects. 
To accomplish this, Dante uses three methods 
of revealing the true nature of sin: first, “by 
bringing in the repulsive demons that pre- 
side over the circles; in the second place, it 
is shown in the environment which the sin- 
ner endures, and, thirdly, by the inner con- 
dition and torment of the sinner himself. ’ ’ 

Milton was weak in his delineation of 
Satan, while Dante has given the best presen- 
tation of the sinfulness of sin to be found in 
all literature. 

Milton said, “Myself am hell,” but Dante 
taught that the sinner made his own hell out 
of his environment. Sin made even the air 


The Fact in Poetry 


39 


“ black with its own folly, and hot with its 
own passion.” The sin of earth is linked to 
the suffering of hell, so that the “ tears and 
blood of earth flow through the Inferno, 
forming the four rivers in which the evil- 
doers are punished. ’ ’ Sin carries with it its 
own penalty and the individual is self-con- 
demned. 

The Inferno and Purgatorio are alike in 
the existence of suffering and toil, but they 
are unlike in that the one is rebellious and 
hopeless, while the other is full of resigna- 
tion and hope. The one is for penalty, the 
other for purification. The one represents 
the fixedness of evil, while the other offers 
the change and regeneration of redemption. 
In one sight is denied, while in the other 
there is the promised beatific vision. In one 
there is constant rebellion, while the other is 
characterized by cheerful obedience. In one 
the gravity of evil drags men down, while in 
the other the gravity of goodness lifts them 
up. Sin is symbolized by darkness and 
chains, while redemption is illustrated by 
light and liberty. To know sin and abide in 


40 


The Fact of Sin 


it, is hell ; but to know God and dwell in Him, 
is heaven. 

Dean Stanley declared that the “Purga- 
torio” “was the most religions book he had 
ever read.” It is a place of hope, of peni- 
tence, and of purification. We may describe 
it as neither heaven nor hell ; bnt the prepara- 
tory school of the penitent seeker after God 
and heaven. The imperfect are being made 
perfect through suffering. This is done 
under divine direction and in hope of attain- 
ing the heavenly home. Dante ’s Purgatory 
is the Protestant’s earthly probation. The 
work he portrays as taking place after death, 
we assert, on New Testament authority, must 
be done before death. What he accom- 
plishes by works, we teach is wrought by 
faith. 

Dante’s Purgatorio is an ecclesiastical ex- 
pediency. The penitent die lacking purifica- 
tion, and the intermediate state involves a 
time element supposedly in aid of divinity. 
The New Testament is very explicit in teach- 
ing that the only essential delay in forgive- 
ness and purification is that which is due to 


The Fact in Poetry 


41 


the withheld consent of the human will. The 
existence of Purgatory is of purely human 
origin and in direct contradiction of Scrip- 
ture. The vision of the poet is nevertheless 
interesting and instructive in its analysis of 
the seven mortal sins which mark the seven 
ledges of this mountain. This classification 
is very similar to that which we find in the 
Inferno. While in the former sin is pre- 
sented as an active force, in the latter we 
have it portrayed as a remaining taint which 
calls for cleansing. Sin in the Inferno was 
a demon, while here it is merely a disease 
requiring treatment. 

We may confidently expect that a writer 
with the intellectual scope and insight of a 
Shakespeare would not go far wrong in re- 
spect to a great problem like that of evil. 
He was not a theologian. He made no special 
attempt to harmonize the existence of sin and 
the infinite love of God. He merely accepted 
conditions and presented the facts as they 
were. Philip Schaff declared that “ Shake- 
speare was a secular poet and professed no 
religion at all; that he was hid behind his 


4 2 


The Fact of Sin 


characters.” The creations, however, are 
none the less his own and can not but reveal 
the man behind them. 

We know that he always speaks of reli- 
gion with marked respect. He makes Virtue 
lovely and Vice hideous. He punishes crime 
and evil of all sorts and makes his tragedies 
of great moral power. The reader is always 
rewarded with a wealth of divine wisdom 
from the richness of his Scriptural quota- 
tions. The unrest and skepticism of the six- 
teenth century seems not to have shaken his 
faith in God and Providence. We can have 
little doubt but that he often bowed before 
Him whose 

“ Blessed feet were nailed 
For our advantage on the bitter Cross.” 

He believed in the might of Right and the 
weakness of wrong. Purity to him was but 
another name for power. The justice of 
one ’s claim was a pledge of victory. In King 
Henry VI we hear him say : 

“ What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted ! 
Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, 

And he but naked though locked up in steel, 

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.” 


The Fact in Poetry 


4S 


A conscience void of offense toward God 
and men was to him a man’s most sacred 
possession. 

“ O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!” 

And again we hear him exclaim with all 
the agony of one in torment : 

“ My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 

And every tongue brings in a several tale, 

And every tale condemns me as a villain.” 

Thus Shakespeare anticipated the modern 
teaching regarding an “ Automatic Judgment 
Seat.” 

In his reference to the fact that conscience 
makes cowards of us all, he must have in- 
tended it to refer especially to the guilty 
man fleeing from justice, since conscience is 
even more capable of making heroes of men 
when supported by a Christian conviction of 
duty. He taught very clearly that the re- 
moval of guilt for sin required more than 
human power. The state of the heart in 
some cases even made repentance impossible. 
Hear him speak through the king, in Ham- 
let, « Whafc then ? What rests ? 

Try what repentance can : What can it not ? 

Yet what can it, when one can not repent ? 

0 wretched state ; 0 bosom black as death ! 

O limed soul, that struggles to be free, 

Art more engaged.” 


44 


The Fact of Sin 


He must have believed in the necessity 
and efficacy of a divine atonement and that 
sin was something more than an error of 
the intellect, a disease of the body or a rem- 
nant of animalism. It was not a superficial 
taint that was capable of being washed away 
by any outward application. 

“Though some of you with Pilate, wash your hands, 
Showing an outward pity, yet you Pilates 
Have here delivered me to my sour cross, 

And water can not wash away your sin.” 

That sin is certain to be revealed was another 
of the tenets of our poet’s faith. 

“ Time will unfold what plaited cunning hides, 

Who covers faults at last with shame derides.” 

And again he asks the question — 

“ How is it with me when every noise appalls me ? 
Guiltiness will speak though tongues were out of use.” 

The moment we come in contact with 
King Lear, Gloster, or Montague we are 
made to feel keenly that the way of the trans- 
gressor is hard. There can be no cheating 
of infinite justice, however much there may 
he among men. Though hand join in hand, 
the wicked shall not go unpunished. 


The Fact in Poetry 


45 


“ In the corrupted currents of this world 
Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice ; 

But 't is not so above. There is no shuffling ; 

There the action lies in his true nature, and we 
ourselves 

Compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of our 
faults, 

To give in evidence." 

Divine justice as well as love is supported by 
Omnipotence. There is no chance for failure 
with the Absolute. The law of sin is death. 
Sin can neither be excused nor covered up. 

“ Foul deeds will rise, 

Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes." 

In King Lear we are assured that — 

“ The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us." 

Shakespeare held very strongly to human 
freedom and responsibility for sin. He was, 
however, equally confident that through the 
medium of divine Providence 

“ There 's a divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough-hew them how we will." 

Even the villain in King Lear scoffs at the 
suggestion of men being ‘ ‘ fools by compul- 
sion, or drunkards, liars, and adulterers by 


46 


The Fact of Sin 


the enforced obedience of some external 
power.” There can be no justification in 
any apology which seeks to excuse us from 
guilt of sin and falsely accuse God of its 
authorship. Browning’s Guido would annul 
his criminal career by a theory of divine ne- 
cessity, but the bard of Avon has no such 
character. Man is not left to struggle alone 
with worldly temptation, nor to follow the 
guidance of a partially obscured vision. Di- 
vinity is ever present to supplement our im- 
perfections. Behind our “knowing in part” 
is His omniscience and underneath our weak- 
ness are the arms of His omnipotence. 

With the exception of the Inspired Writ- 
ings, there is no more vivid and heart-search- 
ing portrayal of the remorse of guilt than 
that of Richard III, who during that awful 
night of agony cried : 

“ O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! 

The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight. 

Cold, fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 

What do I fear ? Myself ? There ’s none else by. 

Bichard loves Richard ; That is, I am I. 

Is there a murderer here ? No ! Yes, I am: 

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why: 

Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself ? 


The Fact in Poetry 


47 


Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? for any good 
That I myself have done unto myself, 

For hateful deeds committed by myself! 

I am a villain : yet, I lie, I am not. 

Fool, of thyself speak well ; Fool, do not flatter! 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 

And every tongue brings in a several tale, 

And every tale condemns me for a villain. 

Perjury, perjury in the highest degree, 

Murder, stern murder in the direst degree, 

All several sins, all used in each degree, 

Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty ! Guilty ! 

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, 

And if I die no soul shall pity me. 

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself ? ” 

How prophetic of pain those “cold, fear- 
ful drops that stand on 'his trembling flesh !” 
What keen remorse that causes conscience to 
rise as with ‘ ‘ a thousand several tongues ’ ’ of 
condemnation! How hard to he forced to 
hate one’s self and confess the villain’s guilt! 
How real the automatic Judgment seat that 
caused the unpardoned Past to stand before 
the bar of conscience while each several sin 
cries, Guilty, Guilty! What utter loneliness 
when neither in the world without nor from 
the soul within can peace be found! The 
entire picture is suggestive of that spiritual 
Laocoon of the great apostle, when he ex- 


48 


The Fact of Sin 


claimed : ‘ ‘ 0 wretched man that I am ! Who 
shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?” 

Milton has been called the poet of the 
sublime, but he was also the bard of theology. 
The great Epics which are inseparably con- 
nected with his name are almost wholly 
Scriptural and have as their central theme 
the fact of sin. We find the key to Paradise 
Lost in the first few lines of that immortal 
poem: 

“ Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world and all its woe, 
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
Restore us and regain the blissful seat.” 

The authority of our Miltonic message 
ought to be of high rank, if we value properly 
the purity of his character, the loftiness of 
his purpose, and the wisdom of his genius. 
All his verses were born of noble prayer and 
under the guidance of the Spirit, that he 
might assert the truths of “Eternal Provi- 
dence and justify the ways of God to men.” 
Such was the aim of the greatest of Eng- 
land^ poets. He was the poetic prophet of 


The Fact in Poetry 


49 


Paradise who so loved God and man that his 
highest desire was to make it possible for 
them to live in mutual harmony. 

Paradise was to him an ideally happy 
place, and they who lived therein were a 
heaven-favored folk. Satan, who is the hero 
of the Epic, is made the primal canse of 
man’s Fall. He was the “infernal serpent 
whose guile deceived the mother of man- 
kind.” In these few words we have his 
theory of the origin of sin, but the explana- 
tion has in it more fiction than fact. Satan 
is always described as acting contrary to 
God 9 s high will, and 6 ‘ evil is his sole delight. ’ ’ 
Since Divine Providence seeks to “bring 
forth good out of our evil, Satan labors to 
pervert that end, and out of good to still find 
some means of evil.” 

This is true to the experience of daily life 
and personal consciousness. The arch-enemy 
of the good is finally defeated and “chained 
on the burning lake,” yet rebellious and reso- 
lute in his determination to overcome the dire 
calamity. Milton agrees with much of divine 
teaching concerning Satan in linking past 
4 


50 


The Fact of Sin 


defeat with present limitation. The expres- 
sion, “better to reign in hell than serve in 
heaven , 9 9 is the language of the outcast rebel. 

As to human freedom and responsibility, 
he says : 

“ I made man just and right, 

Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 

Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.” 

This is in strict accord with what Leibnitz 
would designate as “the best of all possible 
worlds.” The moral sphere could not be 
founded on necessity. It is possible to 
imagine a world without human freedom, but 
impossible to have had man in it as a respon- 
sible moral being. The poet is careful to 
justify God and present man as responsible 
for his own ruin. 

The second element which concerns the 
accountability of the individual is also ex- 
plained in the following words : 

“They themselves decreed 

Their own revolt, not I. If I foreknew, 

Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault.” 

The parent may foreknow the action of the 
child, and yet the fact of knowledge in no 


The Fact in Poetry 


51 


way interferes with the freedom of choice. 
Foreknowledge may be said to transcend 
freedom, but does not determine action. 

“ Men trespass, authors to themselves in all, 

Both what they judge and what they choose ; for so 
I formed them free, and free they must remain, 

Till they enthrall themselves.” 

The question of guilt is also closely re- 
lated to that of freedom and individual self- 
consciousness. Those who feel their guilt 
must acknowledge that — 

“ They themselves ordained their fall. 

The first sort by their own suggestion fell, 
Self-tempted, self-depraved ; Man falls, deceived 
By th’ other first : Man therefore shall find grace ; 
The other none. In mercy and justice both.” 

The Father presents man’s need and sin in 
all its destructive power, to which the Son 
replies: “ Shall man be finally lost and the 
Adversary thus obtain his end and frustrate 
Thine? Shall he fulfill his malice and Thy 
goodness bring to naught?” In other words, 
the Only-begotten of the Father raised the 
question which has troubled many fearful 
souls all down the centuries : ‘ 1 Shall Good fail 
and Evil triumph?” Though we have too 


52 


The Fact of Sin 


often failed in onr faith, still Omnipotence 
has always answered in the affirmative. He 
who is rich in resources of helpfulness de- 
clared : 

“ I will renew 

Man’s lapsed powers though forfeit and enthralled 

By sin, to foul exorbitant desires : 

Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand 

On even ground against his mortal foe. 

And I will place within him as a guide 

My umpire Conscience.” 

The author now comes to the law of sin 
and the union of justice and love. Personal 
sin is an act of “rebellion against the high 
supremacy of heaven which affects even the 
Godhead.” The transgressor loses all, and 
he with his whole posterity must die. 

“ Die he or Justice must ; unless for him 
Some other, able and as willing pay 
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.” 

God will have His ear attentive and His 
eye watchful in mercy and long-suffering, 
always striving to soften stony hearts, and 
yet the wage of sin must be death. That jus- 
tice is inherent in the essential character of 
Deity is a fact that the great majority of 
critics fail to grasp. The Atonement can 


The Fact in Poetry 


53 


never be considered as an unnecessary sacri- 
fice to those who have any clear conception 
of God as a being of absolute perfection and 
holiness or of sin as a violation of divine 
law. This was clear to the mind of Milton 
when he declared that either the sinner or 
Justice must die, so long as no sufficient sat- 
isfaction be offered. 

The Son, in answer to God’s plea for man, 
exclaimed : 

“ Behold Me, then : Me for him, life for life 
I offer ; on Me let Thine anger fall ; 

Account Me man : I for his sake will leave 
Thy bosom and this glory next to Thee 
Freely put off, and for him lastly die 
Well pleased ; on Me let Death wreak all his rage. 
So Heavenly love shall outdo Hellish hate.” 

Christ in His incarnation became the new 
head of the race in Adam’s stead, and, 

“ As in one all perish so in Thee, 

As from a second root, shall be restored 
As many as are restored ; without Thee none. 
Adam’s sin makes guilty all his sons ; Thy merit, 
Imputed, shall absolve them who renounce 
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds, 
And live in Thee transplanted, and from Thee 
Receive new life.” 

Paradise Regained, which is the complet- 
ing complement of Paradise Lost, was com- 


54 


The Fact of Sin 


posed by Milton through the suggestion of 
his Quaker friend, Thomas Ellwood. As he 
had sung his inspired dirge of sin’s sad en- 
trance into the world, so now he sings the 
joyful chorus of Redemption. Again we find 
the statement of his theme in the opening 
words : 

“ I who ere while the happy Garden sung 
By one man’s disobedience lost, now sing 
Becovered Paradise to all mankind, 

By one man’s firm obedience fully tried. 

Through all temptation and the Tempter foiled 
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, 

And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.” 

His treatment of the Atonement is weakened 
by his effort to place the temptation and obe- 
dience of Christ in contrast with the tempta- 
tion and disobedience of Adam. Eden is 
made the scene of Paradise Lost, and the 
Wilderness the place where Paradise was 
regained. There is a certain beauty in all 
this which is permissible to poetry, but it is 
not good theology. 

The fact is that Paradise Regained can 
not be limited to the temptation of J esus, but 
must be made to extend from the Advent at 


The Fact in Poetry 


55 


Bethlehem to the morning of the Resurrec- 
tion. The arena of temptation is not the 
chief concern of either divinity or humanity. 
There would have been better ground for 
having chosen either Calvary’s cross or the 
empty tomb in Joseph’s garden. We all pass 
through the narrow gate of testing, but our 
definite work of life comes later. To with- 
stand evil is negative, but to serve the good 
is positive. The prevalence of evil is not in- 
dicative of its importance. 

Paradise Lost assures us that Paradise 
Regained is to follow, but the analysis of the 
redemptive work is left for his later Epic. 
The sacrifice had been offered and accepted in 
heaven, and yet there must be the mysterious 
touch and union of the divine and the human, 
if sin was to find an effective remedy. The 
Incarnation was to be the seal of Satan’s 
defeat and the certain revelation that God 
was able 

“ To produce a man 
Of female seed, far abler to resist 
All his solicitations and at length 
Al l his vast force and drive him back to Hell — 
Winning by conquests, what the first man lost 
By fallacy surprised.” 


56 


The Fact of Sin 


Evil continues to be the abnormal enemy that 
gained admission by deception and deceit. 
“Sin and Death, the two grand foes of man/’ 
are both to be conquered by “this perfect 
Man by merit called God’s Son, and He to 
earn salvation for the sons of men.” 

The poetic portrayal of the triumph of 
Jesus in every phase of the temptation in the 
Wilderness is a beautiful realization of the 
genius of our inspired messenger. The obe- 
dient Son endued with power divine prevails 
against “the attempter of the Father’s 
throne, and he with all his host are cast 
down.” A fairer Paradise is founded now 
for Adam and his chosen sons. In the clos- 
ing lines of the poem the writer breaks forth 
in strains of exultant joy: 

“ Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both Worlds, 
Queller of Satan ! On Thy glorious work 
Now enter, and begin to save mankind.” 

The existence of evil was to Tennyson a 
mental mystery. The solution was supple- 
mented by his never-failing faith, which may 
be found in the following lines : 

“ Strong Son of God, immortal love, 

Whom we that have not seen Thy face, 

By faith and faith alone embrace, 

Believing where we can not prove.” 


The Fact in Poetry 


57 


He was conscious of the power of purity in 
individual lives when he wrote : 

1 My strength is as the strength of ten 
Because my heart is pure.” 

His conception of human depravity is found 
in his apt reply to a friend : 

“ If there be a devil in man 
There is an angel too.” 

We also find he was very clear in his ex- 
pression of guilt as one of the results of sin : 

“ His gain is loss: for he that wrongs his friend 
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about 
A silent court of justice in his heart, 

Himself the judge and jury, and himself 
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned.” 

He despised evil, and yet he was desirous, 
though he knew not : 

“ That somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill.” 

and 

“ That nothing walks with aimless feet 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 

Or cast as rubbish to the void 
When God hath made the pile complete.” 

This larger hope, as he expressed it, was not 
a settled conviction, but the ecstatic voice of 
1 ‘ children crying in the night . 9 9 


58 


The Fact of Sin 


Sin has made society abnormal, and the 
individual had become weakened and de- 
praved, so that the poet was merely giving 
expression to humanity’s deepest longing 
when he cried out of his conscious need: 

“ O for a man to arise in me 
That the man I am may cease to be.” 

It would be difficult to find in all literature a 
more perfect prayer for the work of divine 
regeneration than that of the preceding lines. 
The ethical theory of Tennyson has thus been 
formulated : 4 The soul must rule the senses, 
and not the senses rule the soul, while the 
soul itself must be ruled not by self, but by 
the higher love that finds its deepest life in 
sacrifice. ’ ’ 

His “ vision of sin” presents the desecra- 
tion of life and the sad death of the soul. 
The sin is largely sensual, and the subject, 

“ A youth who came riding toward a palace-gate 
And rode a horse with wings.’ ’ 

This is suggestive of the “high spiritual pos- 
sibility” of life. We have been granted 
wings to aid us in rising from the low level 


i 


The Fact in Poetry 


59 


of selfishness to the heights of self-sacrificing 
service. The “ heavy rider that held him 
down” may be represented as the sensual 
self. First there comes 4 ‘ a child of sin, * ’ who 
leads him into an environment of evil. The 
very air seems charged with the bacilli of 
vice. The music is so voluptuous that those 
who hear it sigh and grow pale. Now it rises 
and “storms in orbs of song” until all are in 
a giddy whirl of sound. The crowd suddenly 
start from their places as though moved by 
violence. They catch each other in wild grim- 
aces, and, “dashing together, are killed as 
with some luxurious agony.” 

The scene is altered. Beyond the dark- 
ness and the cataract God appears as “a 
rose of awful dawn.” This is the divine call 
to the heights, but it passes unheeded. The 
neglected light disappears, and in its place 
comes a formless, hueless vapor. In place of 
the youth we have the old man, lean as death. 
Sin robs the cheek of its flush of health and 
leaves only the taint of visible vice. The 
palace is exchanged for the ruined inn. The 
pure companions of the home are thrust 


60 


The Fact of Sin 


aside for those of passion and Inst. The de- 
praved speech is evidenced in all his conver- 
sation. Though he remembers the time when 
he thought his youth half divine, still he dis- 
plays a rude indifference to things once 
sacred. Sensuality has made him a cynic 
and an atheist. The individual who once had 
wings to rise toward heaven, now describes 
himself as a fish that loves the mud. 

Fame, friendship, and virtue are all alike 
“ mixed with the cunning sparks of hell.” 
We are men of ruined blood, 

“ Ruined trunks on wither’d forks, 

Empty scarecrows, I and you.” 

The revelry and blasphemy continue until the 
voice grows faint and there comes a further 
change. The ‘ 4 longer night” is near, and 
death is soon to claim its own. The “mystic 
mountain range” again appears, and then a 
voice is heard : 

“ Behold ! it was a crime 
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time.” 

These were the words of the demon that 
sought to excuse his guilt. He would limit 


The Fact in Poetry 


61 


sin to the lower life, and thereby justify the 
sinner. Presently we hear a second voice, 
and Error is exposed by Truth, as expressed 
in the following lines : 

“ The crime of sense became 
The crime of malice, and is equal blame.” 

The moral life is a unity, and the indi- 
vidual always acts through his total per- 
sonality. The sad death of the impenitent 
ends with a cry to the summit : 

“ Is there any hope ? 

To which an answer pealed from the highlands, 

But in a tongue no man could understand ; 

And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 

God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.” 

The fact is herein certified that from the 
dawn of life to the declining hours of old 
age God never fails to break the vision of 
sin with that higher vision of redemption. 
In the life of Lancelot we find that sin mars 
even the features of the face: 

“ The great and guilty love he bore the Queen, 

In battle with the love he bare his lord, 

Had marred his face and mark’d it ere his time.” 

The sin of Guinevere wrecks a nation as 
well as an individual. The very perfection of 


62 


The Fact of Sin 


King Arthur becomes an offense to her whose 
life had been touched with the taint of sin. 

“ He is all fault who has no fault at all, 

For who loves me must have a touch of earth.” 

After long years of fatal delay she gives ex- 
pression to the prayer of penitence : 

“ Help me, Heaven, for surely I repent, 

For what is true repentance but in thought 
Not even in inmost thought to think again 
The sins that made the past so pleasant to us.” 

The sense of sin still haunts her even after 
the injured one has pledged his forgiveness 
and bid her do for her own soul the rest. 
This she failed to do, and remorse of con- 
science suggests suicide, but 

“ What help in that? I can not kill my sin, 

If soul be soul ; nor can I kill my shame.” 

Waiting and wisdom suggest a better way. 
“ And left me hope 

That in mine own heart I can live down sin.” 

The regeneration is complete and she beholds 
him whom she had wronged as “the highest 
and most human.’ ’ 

In Geriant and Enid we behold sin eating 
like a canker at the heart of him who was 


The Fact in Poetry 


63 


wedded to the lovely daughter of Yniol. Per- 
sonal impurity made him suspicious of 
purity. The sin of self-indulgence had be- 
come the mother of a score or more of dread- 
ful crimes. 

“ 0 purblind race of miserable men, 

How many among us this very hour 
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves 
By taking true for false, or false for true.” 

Enid was the innocent victim of an evil jeal- 
ousy, but she suffered nobly, with a love that 
never failed. The sin of lust was at last con- 
quered by the self-sacrifice of Love, 

“ Nor did he doubt her more 
But rested in her fealty, till he crown’d 
A happy life with a fair death.” 

The poem of Gareth and Lynette is a sort 
of ethical allegory wherein the soul of man 
is assailed at each period of its earthly life 
by enemies personified in Morning, Noon, 
Evening, and Night. These represent the 
characteristic sins which arrest the spiritual 
ascendency of the individual. Youth faces 
the subtle and deceptive sins which make 
their assault under the guise of pleasure and 
delight. 


64 


The Fact of Sin 


Sir Noonday-Sun follows with a second 
attack, which is aimed at manhood’s most 
vulnerable point. The glitter of gold and the 
ambition for worldly success are here used as 
the basis of the appeal. The spiritual is 
dimmed by the material, and only after a 
courageous contest is the victory won. The 
power of habitual sin is illustrated in the 
struggle of Gareth endeavoring to free him- 
self from the enslaving power of Sir Evening 
Star. The continuance of sin hardens the 
heart, deadens the conscience, and weakens 
the will. The danger of defeat always lurks 
in the delay of our complete emancipation. 

“ He seemed as one 
That all in later, sadder age begins 
To war against ill uses of a life, 

But these from all his life arise, and cry, 

‘ Thou hast made us lords and can’st not put 
us down/ ” 

The poet seems to follow the teaching of 
Paul not only in his portrayal of the war 
which the flesh wages against the Spirit, but 
also in naming Night, or Death, as the last 
enemy we are called upon to conquer. This 
final battle is one of great reward, for, 


The Fact in Poetry 


65 


“ Out from this 

Issued the bright face of a blooming boy 
Fresh as a flower newborn .’ * 

Triumphant Death is the beginning of eternal 
youth. Sin is vanquished and Good becomes 
victorious. 

So large mirth lived and Gareth won the quest.” 

Lynette lived her life under the dominion of 
the senses and blind to her higher spiritual 
vision. Only during the closing days did 
she come to know the secret of Gareths 
triumph : 

“ Then she clapt her hands, 

Full merry am I to find my goodly knave 
Is knight and noble.” 

“The Holy Grail” is a sort of poetic Pil- 
grim’s Progress. The quest is for the re- 
covery of the vision of purity, which had been 
lost through the entrance of sin. To those 
who live in sin the Good is always lost. The 
recovery is brought about not by pilgrimages, 
but by the purification of the heart. Purity 
is always an essential to seeing good and God. 
The senses are in constant opposition to the 
5 


66 


The Fact of Sin 


soul. Each pilgrim has to encounter various 
forms of evil as he travels toward the high- 
ways of holiness. The pearl of great price 
is secured only at the cost of selling all. The 
Highest must have pre-eminence. 

The good must give place to the best. 
Even the love of home and the prattle of lit- 
tle children — “those truants from heaven” — 
must not delay the search. The prize of 
wealth and the praise of fame, together with 
the attractiveness of human ambition — must 
all take subordinate positions to the one di- 
vine imperative — the possession of purity. 
Each knight experienced his own peculiar 
temptations and trials and was compelled 
to wage a continuous warfare for supremacy. 
Sir Galahad had gained the secret of success, 
when he learned that, 

“ His strength was as the strength of ten 
Because his heart was pure.” 

The denial of self was the last victory in 
the conquest of the spiritual. He is now 
equipped for the call of service, 

“And in the strength of this he rode 
Shattering all evil customs everywhere.” 


The Fact in Poetry 


67 


The victory over sin within had preceded the 
conquest of sin without. Lancelot describes 
the cause of his failure in the following lines : 

‘ * In me lived a sin 

So strange, of such a kind that all of pure 
Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung 
Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower 
And poisonous grew together.” 

Sin made him weak who once was strong. He 
had thought it little and unseen, forgetting 
that no sin is small. It may be secret, but it 
is the open door to other evil. 

The poet makes his life proof of the fact 
that our sins are sure to find us out. In the 
hour of his unrest and remorse he exclaims : 

“ I will embark and I will lose myself, 

And in the great sea wash away my sins.” 

But in this hour of threatened tragedy Doubt 
is lost in Faith. He is led to a quiet room 
where he hears the sweet voice of music. The 
song speaks of Hope and Victory. He be- 
gins the ascent out of the depths of Doubt 
toward the heights of Faith. 

“ Up I climbed a thousand steps 
With pain : as in a dream I seemed to climb 
For ever.” 


68 


The Fact of Sin 


The pain was the price of penitence. The 
goal was the Mount of Purity. We find here 
a sample theory of evolution. Men are to 

“ Move upward, working out the beast 
And let the ape and tiger die.” 

This couplet, which is a favorite quotation of 
many, is merely a poetic symbolizing of 
moral redemption and can not be taken as 
proof that Tennyson was a devotee of Dar- 
win. His message in its totality is against 
any such conclusion. 

We have reached the conclusion of onr 
study of the poets, which of necessity has 
been very brief. In the limited space of one 
short chapter it is only possible to select a 
few of the most prominent leaders in this 
special line of thought, but we desire this 
beginning to prepare the reader to continue 
his investigations in what we believe to be 
one of the richest and most suggestive fields 
of literature for both the layman and the 
student. 


THE FACT IN EVOLUTION 


“Sin is not being imperfect at all, but a contravention of 
what ought to be at a given moment, and what can lay claim 
to unconditioned worth. If evil is supposed to consist only 
in development, which God has willed in His character as 
Creator, then its absolute wrongfulness must come to an 
end. The non-realization of the idea can not be blame- 
worthy in itself, if the innate law of life itself prescribes pro- 
gressiveness of development.” — “ System of Doctrine.” 

— Dorner. 


“ Taking the ethical and evolutionary theories, I contend 
that it is impossible to derive out of them conceptions of 
sin and guilt adequate to the Christian view. It is evident 
that, in all such theories, sin is made something necessary 
— not something that might be or could be, but an absolute 
necessity. In every one of them, the original condition ot 
man is supposed to be such that sin could not but resulf 
from it. This, it seems to me, is practically to empty the 
idea of sin of its real significance, and to throw the responsi- 
bility of it directly back on the Creator.” 

— Professor James Orr. 


70 


EVOLUTION 


Evolution in the thought of many is ac- 
cepted as the panacea for all our ills. This 
so-called “New Theology” of the “pure and 
uncompromising monotheists” is also being 
used to explain the Fact of Sin. The de- 
votees of this latest “fad” are, however, so 
deficient in that essential attribute known as 
“homogeneity,” that it is very difficult to 
preserve any unity of discussion. We shall 
of necessity limit our criticism largely to the 
theory of Professor Fiske, as presented in 
his book entitled, “Through Nature to God.” 

The first chapter deals with what he terms 
the “legend of the lost Paradise, which has 
figured in the story of the fall of man. ’ 9 The 
author treats the Edenic narrative merely as 
a Persian fable. Paradise is described as 
an ancient zoological garden. The fall of 
man was after all not a “fall,” but in order 
to harmonize divine revelation with this new 
hypothesis, it is considered a “rising.” Sin 
71 


72 


The Fact of Sin 


is made an essential in the npward progress 
of man. The latest expression of this phi- 
losophy has come from R. J. Campbell, of 
London, who asserts that “sin itself is a 
qnest for God.” “The man who got dead 
drunk last night did so because of the impulse 
within him to break through the harriers of 
his limitations, to express himself, and to 
realize a more abundant life. The drunken 
debauch was a qnest for life, a qnest for 
God.” This attempted analysis of sin is no 
explanation, hut a deceptive degradation and 
denial of a spiritual reality. 

The total Christian plan of redemption is 
against such an interpretation. The Bible 
records the fact that “man was made by a 
Divine Creator out of the dust of the 
ground, ’ ’ but Evolution says he came up out 
of the brute creation. Paul claims that man’s 
fall was downward, but Professor Fiske de- 
clares that it was upward. Divine Revelation 
asserts that man was made in the image of 
God, while evolutionists make him the more 
or less improved image of the anthropoid 
ape. Again it is said, “We can at least be- 


The Fact in Evolution 73 

gin to realize that if onr eyes had not been 
opened so that we might know good and evil, 
we should never have become fashioned in 
the divine image.* * Bnt in another hook of 
divine authority we have the statement that 
primal man was made in that image. 

Shall we accept evolution and praise Sa- 
tan for tempting Adam, and look upon the 
fall not as a curse but as a blessing? But 
knowledge of good and evil may be acquired 
in another, better way. The chief evidence 
against saying that they did not already have 
this knowledge in its proper sense, is based 
on the statement of Satan which we must 
class with two previous falsehoods. They 
knew God, and therefore they knew good. 
The expression, “knowledge of good and 
evil,” as used by the Old Testament writers, 
referred to the guilt and shame which accom- 
panied voluntary transgression, and not to 
the acquisition of a moral nature. As a proof 
of this, let us refer to the first verse of the 
thirty-ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, ‘ ‘ More- 
over your little ones . . . who to-day 

have no knowledge between good and evil.” 


n 


The Fact of Sin 


The shame manifest in the action of Adam 
and Eve was from the guilt of sin, and not 
necessarily from the opening of their eyes to 
good and evil. Jesns Christ knew good and 
evil, yet He was never ashamed, because He 
never committed sin. What is meant here 
is the sinner’ s idea of good and evil , not the 
proper knowledge as possessed by the sinless 
moral nature. Strack says : 4 ‘ Had man with- 
stood the temptation, he would have known 
that he had remained loyal to the will of 
God, that is good, and kept himself aloof 
from evil. He would thus without partaking 
of the fruit, by overcoming temptation, have 
attained the knowledge of good and evil, only 
in a different, not maleficent manner.’ ’ De- 
litzsch and Dillmann agree with this view. 

“The Fall was the creation of man’s evil 
nature of selfishness and disobedience, the 
most tremendous act of independent volition 
ever put forth by man. It revolutionized his 
being. It changed the direction of the deep- 
est streams of life. The changed nature must 
have been transmitted, since there was no 
other nature to transmit. Evolution became 


The Fact in Evolution 


75 


the evolution of a dwarfed and degraded 
humanity, or, in other words, development 
became degradation. ’ ’ This is a strong state- 
ment in support of the fact that sin entered 
the race by the free-will act of the individual, 
and not by any heredity of “ brute nature.” 
We prefer the Biblical view to that of the 
evolutionist, who says: “ Looking back 
through the glasses of modern science, we 
behold him (man) at first outwardly a brute, 
feebly holding his own against many fierce 
competitors. He has no wants above those 
of the beast; he lives in holes and dens in 
the rocks ; he is a brute, even more feeble in 
body than many of the animals with which 
he struggles for a brute portion.” We are 
apt to conclude that these “modern science” 
lenses were improperly ground, so that the 
image was seriously distorted. If man was 
“outwardly a brute,” was he inwardly a 
man? But if he was inwardly a man, then 
he was not in any sense a brute. “Man’s 
feeble effort to hold his own” is a poor ar- 
gument for the “Survival of the Fittest.” 
We see the “hole whence we were dug,” but 


76 


The Fact of Sin 


just how we came to change our mind and 
evolute into a man, when we had no mind to 
change, is not specifically stated. Why should 
hundreds of centuries have elapsed before 
man began to live as man, or, in other words, 
to live as “normally in his kingdom as the 
brutes in theirs ?” The key to these myste- 
rious speculations is found alone in the fact 
of the Fall. 

In the second chapter, Professor Fiske 
claims that ‘ ‘ matter is not only considered as 
what Dr. Martineau would call an objective 
of God,” but it is endowed with a diabolical 
character of its own. The following chapter 
accuses those who deny that God is the 
author of evil, of limiting the Absolute and 
sacrificing his Omnipotence in order to save 
the attribute of goodness. He would elimi- 
nate the idea of a devil and claim the honor 
of being the “first discoverer of pure and 
uncompromising ’ ’ monotheism. 

‘ ‘ Matter is God ’s self-limitation under the 
law of cause and effect,” says Dr. Strong. 
Humanity is self-limitation of God under the 
law of freedom. Incarnation and atonement 
are the self -limitations of God under the law 


The Fact in Evolution 


77 


of grace. Self -limitation in this sense — 
when it is for high moral purposes and self- 
imposed — is not a limitation. In fact, the 
limitations referred to God are unreal and do 
not interfere with any of His attributes of 
Deity. We in no sense limit God by saying 
that He is not the author of evil, and that He 
created free moral beings with the “possibil- 
ity” of evil. It is the act of a king, who, al- 
though having full power over the lives of his 
subjects, grants them freedom in order to en- 
noble manhood. He had the power to im- 
prison them all, but this lower method is set 
aside and a higher one adopted in its stead. 

We shall now consider the statement that 
the existence of evil is necessary to the exist- 
ence of good. To affirm that “we can not 
know anything whatever except by contrast 
with something else” is to deny the real es- 
sence and substance of everything. No 
health without disease. No pleasure without 
pain. No pure food without poisonous. Lis- 
ten to Browning: 

“Can we love but on condition that the thing we love 
must die ? 

Need there groan a world in anguish just to teach us 
sympathy ! ” 


78 


The Fact of Sin 


Must there he a raging storm outside my 
house before I can he conscious of the fire in 
the grate? Has fire no inherent reality? Has 
the good no positive character? Must we 
conclude that these things are only mere il- 
lusions of the mind, unable to have any real 
existence in separation from their counter- 
part? This is the sort of metaphysical spec- 
ulation which would make good — considered 
as an objective reality — non-existent. 

In speaking of consciousness and of life 
resulting from continual change, he states 
that the only way to be conscious of atmos- 
pheric pressure is to climb a mountain. A 
man whose mind is engaged by other things 
for the time being is unconscious of the tick- 
ing of the clock; therefore we must conclude 
that the clock was not ticking. Subjective 
thought seems, at times, to determine object- 
ive reality. If evil is in any vital sense neces- 
sary to good, then the lessening of evil must 
interfere with our conception of the good. 

Man is not a brute; he does not need to 
associate a club with disobedience in order 
that he may know obedience. He is endowed 


The Fact in Evolution 


79 


with self-consciousness, and every experience 
has a reality of its own, aside from contrasts 
and counterparts. The whole basis of the ar- 
gument is deceptive. In the final analysis, 
such a conception of good and evil simply 
means that, without sin, our conception of 
good would not he exactly as it is. If we had 
no counterfeit money, our notion of currency 
would be slightly changed. If the saloon did 
not exist, our notion of society would he 
slightly different. We admit that our notion 
of good is influenced by the existence of evil, 
but if sin were non-existent we would still be 
able to know good. 

The assertion that ‘ ‘ God is the Creator of 
evil, and from the eternal scheme of things 
diabolism is forever excluded” may be abso- 
lute and uncompromising monism, but it can 
not be accepted as the Christian notion of a 
God of infinite love and justice. A God who 
has on every page of His Revealed Word and 
in every phase of physical existence pro- 
nounced His eternal hatred toward sin, can 
not with any degree of consistency be ac- 
counted its author. Truth is always prefer- 


80 


The Fact of Sin 


able to the theory of an untruth. The unity 
of good and evil as to origin means the non- 
existence of both as such. “The dualism 
which is implied in all attempts to refer good 
and evil to different creative sources’ ’ may 
appear to be remedied. But the effort to 
‘ ‘ get rid of the devil and to make all the uni- 
verse the multiform manifestation of a single, 
all-pervading Deity” has resulted in incor- 
porating the devil as a new attribute of 
Deity. Does it add to the perfection of God 
to make Him the author of the evil as well as 
the good I The author in his attempt to es- 
cape what he interprets as the “Scylla” of 
his opponents, has himself fallen into a self- 
constructed ‘ ‘ Charybdis. ’ ’ 

If, on the other hand, sin be said to have 
an “indispensable function” in the world, 
then it is no longer evil, but good. In accord 
with this, the manifold expressions of wrath 
and judgment against sin, Christ’s deep 
loathing and shrinking from its bitterness 
must all be interpreted as contradictory and 
meaningless. God’s entire attitude toward 
sin, the remorse and guilt which always fol- 


The Fact in Evolution 81 

low wrong-doing, and the incidental wages as 
manifest in this life, all stand in direct oppo- 
sition to the preceding view. 

The attempt to locate sin in matter de- 
stroys onr entire notion of its real nature. If 
depravity is no more than the “ brute mat- 
ter’ ’ which clings to us in our rise from the 
lower animal existence, then, morally, man is 
still a brute and not a man. Sin is no longer 
sin, but a natural part of our animal exist- 
ence. 

Evolution proper has but one form, and 
that may be termed naturalistic. It is a me- 
chanical method by which man is supposed 
to be evolved from the lower forms of life. 
Nature is a unity, and the solidarity of the 
race is extended so as to include all animate 
life, but the coming from a lower to a higher 
necessitates a helping hand reached down 
from above. The “survival of the fittest” 
can never explain the existing forms of life, 
nor can it offer rational evidence in support 
of man’s elevation and unique character- 
istics. Moral life is not animal life elevated, 
but something essentially different. Moral 
6 


82 


The Fact of Sin 


obligation can not come from a plane of being 
which has nothing higher than brnte instinct. 

In the language of the Christian Evolu- 
tionist, and in order to be up-to-date, we must 
say that the house built by John Smith was 
not builded, but evolved. The world created 
by God was likewise an evolution. The five 
loaves and two small fishes either evoluted 
into food sufficient for the multitude, or the 
crowd was deceived. Adam was in reality 
not created by the Creator, but he was the 
outgrowth of some previous form of life. 
“Evolution, both etymologically and ration- 
ally, means the passage into explicitness of 
that which was before implicit.’ ’ Spencer 
says: “Then were we an indefinite, inco- 
herent homogeneity, but we are hoping to 
evolve toward a definite coherent hetero- 
geneity. ’ ’ This will doubtless be a delightful 
state when we reach it, but as to how we are 
to reach it and who is to inform us of our ar- 
rival, we are not instructed. The Psalmist 
says ‘ ‘ man was made a little lower than God, 
and was crowned with honor and glory ; * ’ and 
John, carrying out the same thought as to 


The Fact in Evolution 


83 


man’s supremacy, exclaims: “Now are we 
the sons of God, but it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be, but we know that when He 
shall appear, we shall he like Him, for we 
shall see Him as He is . 9 1 

The author of “Evil and Evolution” 
states that ‘ ‘ the world is fast adapting itself 
to the physical forces of Nature, and is fall- 
ing into line with the moral principles of the 
universe. Maladjustment is being corrected, 
and evil is vanishing.” But whence this 
adaptation and identification with the higher 
moral forces and why this maladjustment? 
Shall we assume that this maladjustment was 
primal in order that the evolutionist may 
have a basis for the construction of a theory 
which is constantly embarrassed by more ex- 
ceptions than agreements with its law? A so- 
lution of the problem that is based on the as- 
sumption that “evil is in the world simply 
because the whole system of things is imper- 
fect,” is very superficial and unsatisfactory. 

Again we are expected to gain moral 
profit from the promised hope that “as the 
system evolves evil will disappear.” This is 


84 


The Fact of Sin 


mere presumption and at variance with the 
facts of history. The author goes on to ex- 
plain that “in the great work of creation we 
can not expect perfection at first. Some little 
confusion and blundering must be looked for 
until things have shaken down a little and 
have had time to get into proper adjust- 
ment.” The conception of the Divine Cre- 
ator is that of a blundering workman unable 
to avoid imperfections. This is charity for 
Deity which is contradictory to character. If 
the Father was unable to avoid blundering 
maladjustments, whence the Power that is 
to direct “this absolutely perfect universe” 
of the future 1 ? But imperfection is not sin. 
The unevolved represents none of the ele- 
ments of moral evil. Sin is centered in an- 
other sphere. It is the chosen act of an indi- 
vidual, and not the maladjustment of an or- 
ganism. The free act of knowledge, and not 
the unavoidable blunder of ignorance. The 
existence of sin is equally as prevalent among 
the supposedly higher classes as among the 
lower unevolved. 

The fact is that the physical phase of the 


The Fact in Evolution 


85 


problem is of least importance in our analy- 
sis of moral evil. Sin is almost wholly moral 
and spiritual in nature. Earthquakes and 
storms must be classed as physical calamities 
and have no special bearing upon the fact of 
sin. The scientist who declares that sin did 
not originate with man, places himself on 
record as an opponent of the Christian doc- 
trine of sin. 

The argument that “the present adjust- 
ment of the system is productive of more 
good than evil” fails to meet the real issue. 
It furnishes no justification of either God or 
man. We can not conceive of an absolutely 
holy and omnipotent Father creating any- 
thing but the best possible world in which 
there would be on His part no imperfection. 
God creates by divine fiat, while man de- 
velops his productions through experience. 
The existence of evil is attributed to the lim- 
itations of the infinite. The very statement 
is a contradiction. It is excusing personal 
guilt on the ground of impersonal deficien- 
cies. The inference may be good, but the 
method is bad. The “awful maladjustments 


86 


The Fact of Sin 


and imperfections ’ ’ are apparently the only 
thing visible to these empiricists. Good and 
evil seem to be little more than questions 
of economic and physical well-being. Suf- 
fering is branded as evil and nothing but 
evil. The very principles of their theory de- 
prive them of the 4 ‘ upward look” and make 
even their reasoning “of the earth and 
earthy.” In another place we are told that 
“there can be no reconciliation of science 
and religion until we can agree on some 
reasonable theory of accounting for the 
strange fact that a God who is said to love 
itself — just, true, good, merciful, fatherly — 
can yet work for immeasurable ages by every 
phase of cruelty and wrong.” This sounds 
like Renan’s subjective pessimism, which as- 
serted that “since Christianity was not true, 
nothing was worth living for.” But Chris- 
tianity is not untrue and our God has not 
been working through the centuries “by 
every phase of cruelty and wrong.” The 
price of the proposed reconciliation is one 
which Christianity will never pay. Natural- 
istic evolution is not altered in character by 


The Fact in Evolution 87 

being robed in ecclesiastical millinery and 
labeled with theistic nomenclature. 

Another statement made by this same 
author is “that in all stages of life a certain 
degree of selfishness would obviously be in- 
dispensable to the individual ’s care of him- 
self.” The comment may seem severe, and 
yet we can not refrain from saying that a 
scientist with a moral sensibility incapable 
of making any distinction between that which 
we term the sin of selfishness and that other 
divine endowment which furnishes the in- 
stinct of self-care, lacks the qualifications 
essential to dealing with any phase of Chris- 
tian morals. They further assert that “noth- 
ing in the whole universe is created perfect .’ 9 
Life in all its circling spirals is a grand 
crescendo. The very highest is a develop- 
ment from the very lowest, and this is held 
to be as true of the archangels as of men. 
The very logic of such an affirmation would 
compel the inclusion of God Himself, and 
then their “boot strap” evolving universe 
would be complete. Every phase of the su- 
pernatural which does not chance to fit into 


88 


The Fact of Sin 


the ultra-dogmatic creed of these modern 
philosophers must be sacrificed. 

F. R. Tennant, in a course of lectures on 
the “Origin and Propagation of Sin” be- 
fore the University of Cambridge, recently 
said “that there was a Godward side to the 
problem of sin npon which a man is qualified 
to speak in proportion as his own life ap- 
proximates to the pattern of the sinless 
One. ’ ’ He asked his hearers to descend with 
him to a distinctly lower level of discussion — 
a merely intellectual, as distinguished from 
a spiritual point of view.” This is a just 
and honest apology for his method of treat- 
ment, which was wholly from the standpoint 
of an evolutionist. In the introductory lec- 
ture he affirms that “in dealing with the 
origin of sin in the conception of develop- 
ment, for the present we have to move largely 
in the sphere of theory and speculation. ’ ’ 

The first part of the discussion has to 
do with his theory as to the development of 
the moral consciousness. This, he asserts, 
“is found in the savage largely in germ, and 
action is either impulsive or determined by 


The Fact in Evolution 


89 


tribal custom; since the tribal self precedes 
the personal self.” He admits that the sci- 
entist has no knowledge of primitive man, 
and since there can be no snch thing as pre- 
historic history they are compelled to fall 
back on the method which the physicist calls 
4 1 extrapolation. ’ 9 The conclusions are drawn 
from learned generalizations that are based 
on pure hypotheses. Moral consciousness is 
no longer a divine endowment ; it must be con- 
strued as a human evolution. The “must” 
here used is in behalf of a theory, and is 
made to take precedence to the “must” of 
Christian fact and experience. 

But we may be permitted to inquire why 
the savage of to-day can be considered 
younger than the citizen of civilization. 
They have both been afforded ages of op- 
portunity for evolving. The Hottentot is as 
ancient as the Englishman. If there is this 
universal immanence which is continually 
evolving the higher complex out of the lower 
elementary, how shall we account for the fact 
that certain races have remained for cen- 
turies untouched? Again, we ask for an ex- 


90 


The Fact of Sin 


planation of how the gospel message of 
human responsibility and divine redemption 
is able to transform the cannibals of an en- 
tire island into law-abiding Christian citizens 
during one single generation, if these same 
savages be “ impersonal’ ’ and possess moral 
consciousness only in germs that require time 
for development. These “ non-moral imper- 
sonals ’ ’ are either a marked exception to the 
method of the theory, or the messenger must 
be credited as being a miracle worker. 

The human infant is considered as a type 
of the primitive man and described as “a 
non-moral animal in which the faculties of 
will and moral sense are made, not born. Ex- 
perience begins in blank sensation and feel- 
ings of pleasure and pain. No animal spe- 
cies, indeed, is so slenderly furnished at birth 
with ready-made endowments ; but none 
shows so great a receptivity and capacity 
for adaptation. Apart from the external 
educating environment, however, the child 
would remain on a level little superior to that 
of the brutes.” This characterization of 
childhood may be essential to the evolution- 


The Fact in Evolution 91 

ist’s conception of sin, but it is false to the 
facts and not necessary to tlie construction 
of a Christian theodicy. The “ parental en- 
vironment” is over-emphasized, while the 
personal endowments are almost wholly de- 
nied. He classifies them as really below the 
animal, and yet “in receptivity and capacity 
for adaptation” they evidence the fact that 
they belong to altogether another and higher 
species. The logic of the theory ought to 
make environment as beneficent in the case 
of an infant chimpanzee as in that of the 
babe born of Mother Gladstone. 

The enforced attempt to credit every 
moral faculty to human evolution, rather 
than to divine endowment, has led to much 
strange and fictitious teaching. Evolution 
also insists that “fear and anger, envy and 
jealousy, self-centeredness and self-pleasing, 
are qualities which form a part of the birth- 
right of the human being in virtue of his ani- 
mal ancestry.” These are all considered to 
be “natural, normal, and necessary.” But 
we can not accept the assumed origin and na- 
ture of the above-named attributes and at 


92 


The Fact of Sin 


the same time consistently claim to accept the 
Christian fact of sin. 

Sin as responsible violation of divine law 
is made void, and there remains only what 
may be called natural or physical evil. All 
the rhetorical utterances regarding moral evil 
and personal gnilt become a meaningless 
travesty of words. Their own statement is 
that “the opportunity for sin is supplied by 
man’s inherited organic nature and by his 
social environment, for neither of which he 
is in any wise responsible.” A non-moral 
animal is supposed to evolve into a moral 
personality. Sin is born of a social environ- 
ment, which, for the primitive man, at least, 
must have been non-existent. 

An eminent authority, in writing on the 
subject of “Evolution and Christian Doc- 
trine,” makes the statement that “evolu- 
tionary science affords us absolutely no 
knowledge as to man’s earliest consciousness 
of personal relation with God; and until we 
have historical or other evidence, we are at 
least as warranted in holding that, when man 
first stood forth as man, rational and re- 


The Fact in Evolution 93 

ligious, he found sin to consist in the delib- 
erate disobedience to the known will of God, 
as in holding any other theory. The degree 
of crndence with which at the birth of his 
reason and freedom he conceived of God or 
law or disobedience, has nothing to do with 
the determination of the essential nature of 
sin. The doctrine of sin is not dependent 
on a theory of origin. It is not a question 
of a fall upward or downward, but of man’s 
whole course of self-revelation. ’ 9 

The empirical theory of sin can not but 
be a disappointment to those who have other 
than a mere metaphysical interest in its ex- 
istence. It is to be regretted that the in- 
fluence of evolutionary science has not only 
been a lessening of individual responsibility 
for sin, hut a corresponding depreciation of 
the supernatural in life. Sin has not only 
been given a new definition, but it has be- 
come, ‘ 6 either unconsciously or intentionally, 
something far less sinful in its relations to 
God and in man’s conscious sense of guilt. 
The masses are specialists in the doctrine of 
experienced sin, which has been described 


94 


The Fact of Sin 


as a higher grade of being ; but the resultant 
product does not substantiate the teaching of 
the theory.” Aside from the work wrought 
through the power of divine regeneration and 
purification, we can point to no lessening of 
evil, nor to any examples of moral evolution. 

In answer to the query as to “what bear- 
ing the theory of evolution has on the Chris- 
tian doctrine of sin, Archdeacon Wilson made 
this reply: “Man fell when he first became 
conscious of the conflict of freedom and con- 
science. To the evolutionist sin is not an 
innovation, but is the survival or misuse of 
habits and tendencies that were incidental to 
an earlier stage of development. Their sin- 
fulness lies in their resistance to the evolu- 
tionary and divine force that makes for moral 
development and righteousness. The fall 
from innocence was in a sense a rise to a 
higher grade of being.” The Christian 
Scriptures, which constitute our most author- 
itative teaching on the doctrine of sin, are 
very emphatic in asserting that sin is an in- 
novation, and that therein is centered the 
direst element of its criminality. We are 


The Fact in Evolution 


95 


also informed that sin is against the divine 
statutes of a holy God, and not the mere 
interference with an evolutionary force. 
The highest point in the culpability of the sin- 
ner is found to be where his act touches the 
holiness of our personal Father. 

One of the late writers on Evolution as a 
“New Theodicy” is Dr. George A. Gordon, 
who claims that “the temporary power man 
has to resist God is in consequence of the 
irrationality that he has brought up with him 
from the animal world, and therefore his 
character is semi-brutal . 1 ’ This view is sim- 
ilar to that of other evolutionists and is open 
to the same manifold objections. The state- 
ment produces the following dilemma : either 
the forces of man’s higher life were in the 
animal life or they were not. If not, then 
man is not a man, but still a brute. If they 
were present, then the animal was never an 
animal, but always a man. 

“Man can not be the mere outcome of 
natural law, and yet accountable for the fact 
that he is no better than he is. If he is only 
the child of nature, he must be entitled to the 


96 


The Fact of Sin 


privileges of nature. If lie has come from 
matter alone, then he can not dwell within the 
shadow of a responsibility whose birthplace 
is elsewhere — in a different region alto- 
gether. And so the spirit of modern science 
is consistently non-Christian. A man who is 
nothing more than an aggregate of natural 
powers can have no true vision transcending 
the range of these powers. The Unseen, or a 
law coming forth from the Unseen to rule 
his spirit, must be a mere superstition to him, 
and sin, as the violation of such a law, a mere 
gloomy phantom, to be got rid of the best way 
he can. 

“We must judge beginnings by endings, 
and not endings by beginnings. Evolution 
only shows what was the nature of the involu- 
tion that went before. Nothing can come out 
that was not at least latently in the germ. I 
must interpret the acorn by the oak, not the 
oak by the acorn. ” Christian evolution is 
very similar to “Christian Science,’ ’ in that 
it is neither “Evolution” nor “Christian.” 
It is used as a mask for the theory in order 
that it may gain an entrance into the realm 


The Fact in Evolution 


97 


of Theology. When entrance is once gained, 
the mask is of little importance. They nse 
the Bible in much the same way as does Mrs. 
Eddy. They speak in glowing terms of ‘ 6 self- 
sacrifice ’ ’ and the ‘ ‘ everlasting reality of re- 
ligion, 9 ’ bnt religion may come to mean little 
more than respectable paganism. They 
would clear the theological atmosphere of 
‘ ‘ the bats and owls of orthodoxy, ’ 9 and make 
room for the “beautiful and sublime discov- 
eries with which the keen insight and patient 
diligence of modern students are beginning 
to be rewarded.” 

Evolution, even in the best of its varied 
forms, is open to serious objections. The 
chasm between human life and that of mere 
animals has never been bridged. The most 
that can be said is that it is merely a working 
hypothesis, having no claims upon the Chris- 
tian system. The “theodicy” it offers may 
be “new,” but it is sadly deficient in valid 
proof. We find that it is not in accord with 
the following tenets of the Christian system : 
the creation of man, and the origin of sin; 
the fall of man, and his redemption. The 
7 


98 


The Fact of Sin 


moral responsibility of the individual is made 
of none effect, while the existence of sin is 
denied; the recognized authority of divine 
revelation is set aside, and the atonement be- 
comes a meaningless tragedy. 

Professor Wright in the ‘ ‘ Bibliotheca 
Sacra ’ ’ states that “the modern theory of 
evolution, which is so seriously affecting theo- 
logical thought, is largely of the Spencerian 
variety and based upon deduction rather than 
induction. The web is like that of a spider 
which he spins wholly from his own bowels. 
It is a theory by this deductive, a 'priori proc- 
ess which constitutes the evolutionary fad 
of the present time and which is working 
such havoc and confusion in the thought of 
the age and leading so many into intellectual 
positions whose conclusions they dare not 
face and can not flank, and from which they 
can not retreat, except through a valley of 
humiliation, which to the unregenerate heart 
is worse than death.” The above statement 
has had scores of fulfillments, but none more 
marked than that which London has just ex- 
perienced in the case of R. J. Campbell, of 


The Fact in Evolution 99 

the City Temple. The Deity of Christ and 
the inspiration of the Bible were both sacri- 
ficed on the altar of an intolerant theory, 
born of an intellectual bias. In commenting 
on “The New Theology,” Dr. W. Robertson 
Nicoll asserts that Mr. Campbell has for some 
time been minimizing sin and stating that 
God does not care whether we sin or not. 
“Sin is conceived to be merely an effort to 
find God.” 

“To the theologian who is familiar with 
the best scientific thought at the beginning 
of the twentieth century, it is humiliating to 
find that the cast-off clothing of the evolu- 
tionary philosophy of fifty years ago is now 
extensively being picked up and put on by 
many of the religions philosophers and Bib- 
lical critics of the day. The theory is a kind 
of car of juggernaut, for which way must 
be made, regardless of consequences. ” It is 
very evident that the liberals are far more 
intolerant in their dogmas of negation than 
even the extreme orthodox conservatives in 
their positive principles. 

The best examples of this new orthodoxy 


100 


The Fact of Sin 


teach that “ human progress is the gradual 
throwing off of the brute inheritance through 
struggle, so that by and by struggle will be 
needless. The ape and the tiger in human 
nature will become extinct. Original sin is 
nothing more nor less than the brute inherit- 
ance which every man carries with him, while 
the process of evolution is an advance toward 
true salvation. ’ ’ If this he true, then our an- 
cestors were burdened with an undue portion 
of this so-called depravity. The completion 
of this “ throwing-off process’ ’ will remove 
this so-called depravity and men will be born 
saints, and the atonement will no longer be 
a necessity even in the economy of those who 
teach the moral influence theory. “True sal- 
vation” is therefore no more nor less than 
the natural growth and development of the 
individual. This is a certain denial of sin 
and depravity. They may talk of suffering 
and misfortune, but it is inconsistent for 
them to use the Christian term ‘ ‘ sin. ’ 9 They 
deal with natural evil under the assumed 
name of moral evil. It is impossible to har- 
monize Christianity with any such weak and 


The Fact in Evolution 101 

faulty conception of sin and redemption. 
There is great need of caution in accepting 
evolution even though it be robed in the garb 
of Theism. 

Let us, in conclusion, compare the pre- 
ceding statement with a well attested fact in 
Demonology. “ Since Satan is confirmed in 
evil, sin is not necessarily a transient or 
remediable act of the will.” Sin is not a 
stage in man’s development from the brute 
creation. We can no longer regard it as 
1 ‘ simply unripe good . 9 9 There are those who 
are determined to continue in sin and who 
will not love God. If there is an eternal 
good, there must be an eternal sin for those 
who willfully continue in their rejection of 
God. ‘ ‘ Men reach a state of character where 
it may be said that it would be morally im- 
possible for them to choose evil, but this 
power was gained through long years of 
free choice. Men may also reach a state of 
confirmed wickedness when it seems impos- 
sible for them by any effort of their own or 
by the influence of outside help to be re- 
newed again unto repentance. ’ ’ 


102 


The Fact of Sin 


We find it very difficult to harmonize these 
facts with Prof. Fiske’s statement that 4 4 in 
the course of this wonderful evolution it be- 
comes manifest that moral evil is simply the 
characteristic of the lower state of living as 
looked at from the higher. While profoundly 
real, its existence is only relative. In the 
process of our spiritual evolution evil must 
needs be present. But the nature of evo- 
lution also requires that it should be evanes- 
cent.” This is only the echo of one of the 
vain hopes of Herbert Spencer, who after 
forty years of philosophic speculation con- 
fessed his failure to find any satisfaction 
outside the religion of Christ. How sin can 
be only a 4 4 misty unreality, and yet indispen- 
sable in man’s spiritual evolution,” is hard 
to understand. What a hopeful view and 
simple solution of the great problem of evil 
which has for centuries been an almost im- 
penetrable mystery! How encouraging to 
think that, 4 4 in the higher stages, that which 
is worse than the best need no longer be posi- 
tively bad!” What a consoling message for 
the man who is weighed down with the awful 


The Fact in Evolution 


103 


consciousness of years of vice and sin, to tell 
him that “in the process of evolution he is 
entitled to hope that, as it approaches its 
goal and he conies nearer to God, the fact 
of evil will lapse into a mere memory, in 
which the shadowed past shall serve as a 
background for the realized glory of the 
present ! ’ ’ Man and God can retire and wait 
for evolution to do the work. Man does not 
need a Savior, but only time to evolve out of 
the remaining animalism. Dr. Raleigh says 
that, while Paul cried out in his deep con- 
sciousness of sin, “0 wretched man that I 
am, who shall deliver me from the body of 
this death !” the modern philosopher, with 
his new ethics, exclaims boastfully, “0, pro- 
gressive creature that I am, who shall help 
me to evolve myself !” 







IV 

THE FACT IN PHILOSOPHY 


105 


“ God is as little the cause of evil as the current of the 
river is the cause which retards the movement of the boat.” 

— Leibnitz. 


“ Spinoza held evil to be a thing natural ; vice as some- 
thing not to be condemned, but to be explained. Evil was 
necessary because it was privative.” 

“Moral qualities reside not in actions, but in the agent 
who performs them, and that it is the spirit or motive from 
which we do any work that constitutes it the base, or noble, 
worldly or spiritual, secular or sacred.” 


— John Caird. 


PHILOSOPHY 

Science, philosophy, and theology com- 
prise a trinity which onght to have nnity. 
Science and philosophy need Christianity, 
and Christianity in turn needs them. We are 
certain that if Science be sincere in her 
search for trnth, and Philosophy be true in 
her interpretation of phenomena, they must 
finally blend in harmony with Christianity — 
the possessor of Trnth. A philosophy of re- 
ligion is therefore not only desirable, bnt 
very possible. It will aid in preserving the 
nnity of onr fundamental doctrines, and en- 
able ns more fully to keep pace with the needs 
and demands of the modern trend of thought. 

The question is often asked, ‘ ‘ What place 
does sin hold in philosophy, and what has it 
contributed toward the solution of this great 
problem V’ In our attempt to answer this 
query, let us first turn to Greece, which is to 
the philosopher what Judea is to the Chris- 
107 


108 


The Fact of Sin 


tian. Here wisdom and culture gained their 
highest supremacy. However, God was not 
discovered through their wisdom, and mo- 
rality remained at a low tide. The lives of 
the philosophers as well as the leaves of the 
classics were stained with immorality. They 
attempted to solve the problem of evil by 
taking refuge in the ‘ ‘ wild hypothesis of the 
pre-existence of souls.’ ’ When divine aid 
was within reach they still clung to the frail 
raft of human reason. They sought to hu- 
manize Deity, and as a result degraded both 
man and God. Evil became the excusable 
error of ignorance, and righteousness was 
only attainable through knowledge. Con- 
science at times seemed to have had an 
audible voice, and some heard and obeyed its 
message. Socrates sought to lift moral truth 
out of the slough of materialism. He empha- 
sized personality and the pursuit of virtue, 
and presented sin in its relation to man. 
Plato attempted at a later date to present 
it in its twofold relation to man and God. 

The Sophists were a scholarly class, who 
denied that there was any essential difference 


The Fact in Philosophy 109 

between good and evil. Mental and moral 
faculties were accounted of no authority. 
‘ ‘ Right and wrong, virtue and vice, con- 
science and law and God were to them only 
imaginary fictions. ” 

The Epicureans solved the problem by 
surrendering their reason to blind material- 
ism. Moral obligation and character were 
alike impossible. Good was a mere expedi- 
ency, and vice and immorality the natural 
outcome. Virtue had to them no intrinsic 
value. 

The Stoics took life more seriously and 
taught the fulfillment of duty and the mas- 
tery of self. The question of evil was settled 
by saying that man was predestined to either 
good or evil, and for that reason could have 
no choice in the matter. Mortification and 
suppression of passion were substituted for 
elimination. They sought freedom from all 
the ills of life in a self-sufficiency which pre- 
tended to be absolute. 

The philosophy of Epictetus taught the 
necessity of a kind of moral gymnastics. The 
aim was to bring the passions under the con- 


110 


The Fact of Sin 


trol of reason and to bring the will into 
harmony with the will of God. The true 
“ ascetic’ ’ was the one who disciplined him- 
self against all the suggestions of evil desire. 
“An object of desire comes into sight: wait, 
poor soul; do not straightway yield to it: 
consider the contest is great, the task is 
divine. Think of God: call Him to be your 
helper and to stand by your side.” They 
opposed monastic “retreat,” holding that 
everywhere a man will find the same hin- 
drances within and without. True discipline 
was best attained in the crowd. 

Epictetus held that “every object that is 
presented to the mind by either the senses or 
the imagination tends to range itself in ranks 
of either good or evil, and thereby to call 
forth desire or undesire: in most men this 
association of particular objects with the 
ideas of good or evil, and the consequent stir- 
ring of desire, is unconscious, being the re- 
sult of education and habit. It is the task 
of the philosopher to learn to attach the idea 
of good to what is really good, so that desire 
shall never go forth to what is either un- 


The Fact in Philosophy 


111 


desirable or unattainable: this is right deal- 
ing with ideas.” 

The Greek philosopher held to divine law 
as being of nature and a part of the whole 
constitution of the world, while the Chris- 
tian disciple founded morality on a divine 
command. The moral law was a positive 
enactment of God, and any breach of that 
law was sin, not against the constitution of 
Nature, but against the person of God. Dr. 
Hatch states that the one element was con- 
stant; i. e., it was a trespass against God. 
On the one hand, it was something for which 
God must be appeased, and on the other hand, 
something which He could forgive. To the 
Stoics it was shortcoming, failure, and loss, 
and the chief sufferer was the man himself. 
Christianity agreed with most of the former 
and added that it was a crime against God. 

Epictetus, in his answer to the inquiry, 
1 6 What is our duty to Him?”— 'It is simply 
to follow Him : to be of one mind with Him : 
to acquiesce in His administrations, and to 
say, with Socrates, 'If this be God's will, so 
be it. 9 9 9 From such a testimony we can only 


112 


The Fact of Sin 


say that, if the writer failed to live a right 
life, the fault was not a conscious one, but 
due to some error in his interpretation of 
the will of God. 

The Neo-Platonists explained the exist- 
ence of evil by saying that ‘ ‘ God is the author 
of all things except wickedness ; the very na- 
ture of good presupposes its contrast evil, 
and the two are inseparable, like light and 
darkness — which may be called the argument 
from relativity; in the enormous extent of 
the universe something must be neglected; 
when evil happens to the good, it is not as a 
punishment, but as connected with a different 
dispensation ; parts of the world may be pre- 
sided over by evil demons ; what we call evil 
may after all not be evil. ’ ’ 

Descartes sought to reconcile the infinite 
perfection with free moral agency. He states 
that “before God sent us into the world He 
knew exactly what all the inclinations of our 
wills would be. God brings our volitions to 
pass; He wills them; they spring entirely 
from Him; but we are nevertheless free, be- 
cause He constrains not our external actions, 


The Fact in Philosophy 113 

nor does He compel us to do anything con- 
trary to our wills.” 

Spinoza, in the wordy darkness of his 
metaphysical speculations, held that sin had 
its origin in the necessary limitation of finite 
being, or the contrast of individual life, as an 
inevitable stage in the development of man. 
A false monism comes in to take the place 
of Descartes ’ dualism. God becomes the 
author of evil, and man falls from the high 
plane of personal free agency to the low 
level of a mere automaton. Good and evil 
are accounted for as merely relative concep- 
tions resulting from comparison. Sin there- 
fore can not be positive, as nothing can hap- 
pen contrary to God’s sovereign will. Sin 
is negative and only a seeming reality. 
‘ 4 With God there is no idea of evil,” and sin 
is only a hindrance to the good. 

Germany during the seventeenth century 
gave to the world the idealistic philosopher 
Leibnitz, who opposed Spinoza. In his 
“Theodicee” he attempts to show God’s re- 
lation to the world as it is, and to justify the 
existence of evil without involving any con- 


8 


114 


The Fact of Sin 


tradiction of aim. His moral optimism made 
it possible for him to believe this to be the 
best possible world. The best, because Om- 
niscience chose it and created it. The best, 
because it made provision for the free agency 
of the individual. The best, because it made 
moral character a possibility. The best, be- 
cause God is not made the author of evil, but 
that its origin as a reality comes through 
man’s free will in his self -asserted defiance 
of God. 

With all the above we may heartily agree, 
but when the claim is made that sin is a “nec- 
essary 'possibility then we decidedly dis- 
agree. This conclusion was forced upon him 
through his theory that the origin of sin 
was found in the “limitations of the finite.” 
If he had explained human freedom as be- 
ing a philosophical limitation, then the hu- 
man will could have been held responsible; 
but to make the “limitation” general and 
the will merely an element in the necessitated 
possibility, is in a large degree to deny moral 
accountability. Had his philosophy permit- 
ted him to have regarded sin merely as a 


The Fact in Philosophy 115 

“ possibility,’ ’ contingent on the power of 
“alternate choice / ’ it would have greatly 
strengthened his entire argument. In his 
total theory we are forced to consider free- 
dom as a servant of finite forces, when it 
should be the moral master of human destiny. 

Evil is compared with the discords in a 
piece of music, which do not diminish its 
beauty, but only increase it through contrast. 
Man is sinful because he is finite. The limita- 
tions of his nature determine the existence of 
evil. He can not be infinite, therefore he is 
a sinner by creation. But our only inference 
can be, since God is the creator of man, He 
is also responsible for evil. The whole idea 
of sin as here expressed is weak and unsatis- 
factory and could never be made the basis of 
a sound Christian Theodicy. 

The Hegelian doctrine of sin, as stated in 
his “Religio-philosophie,” may be briefly 
summed up under four divisions: 

1. “Evil exists as a metaphysical neces- 
sity. Man is essentially spirit, and spirit 
must oppose itself to naturalness and be free 
in order to raise itself out of its state of im- 


116 


The Fact of Sin 


mersion in nature and finally become recon- 
ciled with its own essence. 

2. “As respects his original condition, 
man exists first in a state of pure naturalness. 
It can hardly be correct to term it a state of 
innocence, for if he did not know evil neither 
did he know good. In truth the first state 
was of mere existence in unity with nature, 
of rudeness, of appetite, and of barbarism 
generally. Man’s animalism is neither good 
nor evil until touched by human conscious- 
ness and will. 

3. “As to the essential nature of this 
state, man was by nature good and by nature 
bad. In the first place, he was created with 
the image of God. Secondly, he is evil be- 
cause he is a natural being, and not wholly 
spiritual. The logic of his position would 
either rob Christ of His sinlessness or de- 
prive Him of His humanity. 

4. “Knowledge effected the transition 
from the natural to the moral state. Awaken- 
ing consciousness brings man to recognize 
that he is not what he ought to be; hence 
arises the sense of sin. Man becomes evil by 
eating of the tree of knowledge. In this lies 
the connection of evil with knowledge. 
Knowledge acquaints man with the fact that 
his nature is not what it should be. It is not 


The Fact in Philosophy 117 

that consideration (knowledge) has an eter- 
nal relation to evil, bnt the consideration it- 
self is the evil. Evil is revealed by man’s 
self-withdrawal from a condition of natural- 
ness/ y 

The contribution of Herbert Spencer to- 
ward the solution of the problem of evil is 
not of sufficient importance to justify any 
lengthy discussion. He may be classified as 
an agnostic evolutionist. Although he de- 
voted many years to the construction of a 
new theory of ethics and morals, it proved 
of small value to philosophy and of scanty 
satisfaction to himself. His synthetic system 
of philosophy was constructed on the basis 
of assumed hypotheses, and, though prolific 
in the collation of facts and phenomena, was 
false in many of its conclusions. 

The moral system, as well as man’s sense 
of moral obligation, was considered the 
product of human experience and education. 
Conduct was merely the adjustment of means 
to ends, and might vary from “ simple imper- 
fect to relatively complete adaptations / ’ 
Personal acts are ranked as good or evil, ac- 


118 


The Fact of Sin 


cording as they satisfy or fail to satisfy the 
requirements of the individual or the system. 
That which is now considered moral is only 
a developed form of that which was once im- 
moral. There is an absence of any authority 
above that which one individual in society 
might bear toward another. The determi- 
native elements in the characterization of 
conduct are such as to preclude any worthy 
conception of the fact of sin. 

He used plenty of capital letters, but they 
were apparently for the purpose of avoiding 
final issues, and in reality they reveal the 
weakness of his philosophy. It is impossible 
for any individual to trace any moral prob- 
lem to an adequate cause without inevitably 
facing God. This Mr. Spencer would not 
do, and so took refuge in what he chose to 
designate the “unknown Cause” or the “un- 
realized Reality. ’ 9 

“The continuous adjustment of internal 
relations to external environments” consti- 
tutes in the thought of Mr. Spencer the whole 
of life. The individual is being adapted to 
the newly evolved society. The effort neces- 


The Fact in Philosophy 


119 


sary to the attainment of this “ ideal con- 
gruity” is causal to the existence of the 
moral sense. The individual is denied the 
endowment of any moral ideas or faculty, 
and is the superstitious subject of an un- 
known Force. It is essential to the complete- 
ness of his theory that he shall have a “prim- 
itive man * ’ in harmony with the needs of the 
case. “This man,” says a critic, “is a 
purely imaginative creature, made in his 
study and after the image of its creator.” 
If we are willing to grant our philosopher 
special license in the use of analogy and in- 
ference, then we must be ready to receive 
every sort of conjectured conclusions. It is 
too evident to require any special proof that 
his references to various races and widely 
varying religions are not only lacking in nec- 
essary discrimination, but they are false to 
the facts. 

In his synthetic philosophy there is to 
be found no word that either gives recogni- 
tion to the ideas that have made man or to 
the persons which have most splendidly and 
effectually embodied them. 


120 


The Fact of Sin 


In the idealistic philosophy of Borden P. 
Bowne the moral life is made the analogue 
of the mental life. He criticises the English 
moralists for having generally confused the 
question as to the origin of the moral idea 
with that of validity, a process which has 
resulted either in reducing it to something 
else or in making it primitive and irreducible. 
The aim in both instances he regards as eth- 
ically irrelevant. 1 i The validity and value of 
this moral idea can not be determined by the 
place of its first appearance, since the valid- 
ity is quite another thing from the emergence 
of the idea.” He remarks that “in the 
search for the origin of moral consciousness 
even the brute world has been sharply 
scanned, and the bearing of flogged curs has 
been invested with deep significance.” 

In a reference to the evolutionary doc- 
trine of ethics he has this significant word: 
1 1 How that which is essentially and only brute 
can become anything else, or how the brute 
which has transcended itself still remains the 
identical brute — these questions are un- 
dreamed of. Both assumptions involve a 


The Fact in Philosophy 121 

contradiction. In the former case they affirm 
groundless development, and in the latter 
case they deny the development while affirm- 
ing it.” 

The author states as his settled con- 
viction that the pretended deduction of moral 
ideas from non-moral data and to non-moral 
elements are both purely verbal and ficti- 
tious. The center of character he locates in 
the will to do right. This is possible to every 
one and in all circumstances. With it every 
one can make a beginning and ‘ 1 all may meet 
on the plane of common faithfulness.” 
“The ignorant, the poor, the savage, the 
imbecile, may be faithful to their ideal of 
right; and thereby win the approval of all 
moral beings.” This does not, however, 
make them sinless or perfect, but makes it 
possible for them to have a right attitude to- 
ward righteousness, which is “an essential 
element in all moral development.” 

The will is made the determinative force 
in the choice of good or evil, but it is insuffi- 
cient when taken as a basis of character. We 
have pointed out to us the two essentials in 


122 


The Fact of Sin 


ethical judgment: “the moral ideal and the 
moral ability of the individual. ’ ’ “From 
the standard of the ideal all are condemned, 
but from the side of ability the question is 
very different.” This statement requires 
that we supplement it by the formerly stated 
conditions of the will. 

In morals, what we are is of greater value 
than what we do. The outward result of our 
sin may be largely corrected, but the heart- 
condition of the sinner lies too deep for hu- 
man treatment. “The moral ideal binds us 
not only in our social relations, but also in 
our self-regarding activities and thoughts. 
The crimes of sense and passion are sins 
against humanity, not in the persons of 
others, but in the persons of the agents them- 
selves. ” It is difficult for us to know exactly 
where “self-regard ends and selfishness be- 
gins, where firmness becomes obstinacy and 
meekness pusillanimity.” The moral life is 
of the whole man and begins as a potenti- 
ality, rather than an actuality. 

This is widely different from the usual 
empirical explanation. In our potential man 


The Fact in Philosophy 


123 


even at infancy we have room for divinity. 
We thereby save the moral faculty from deg- 
radation, and draw a distinct line of separa- 
tion between man and every grade of animal 
existence. God gives direction and poten- 
tiality to primitive as well as present human- 
ity, and the Christian position is made secure. 
The animal, being endowed with no poten- 
tiality, but only with mechanical instinct, has 
no self-development or progress. In man, 
possessing potentiality, with added free 
spirit, ‘ ‘ the constitutional becomes moral and 
the natural rises to the plane of the spir- 
itual.” In the moral sphere, as contrasted 
with the physical, instead of blind beneficence 
we have productive good will, and in place 
of natural evil we have moral evil. 

For twenty-five centuries Philosophy has 
been laboring with the Problem of Evil. 
Thales and his coadjutors in the fifth and 
sixth centuries before Christ applied mate- 
rialism. Socrates and Plato sought refuge 
in Idealism. Modern Philosophy began with 
the Dualism of Descartes and the Pantheism 
of Spinoza, and has risen gradually to the 


124 


The Fact of Sin 


Monotheism of Lotze and the Theism of 
McCosh and Bowne. 

Neither the pantheism of Spinoza, nor the 
idealism of Leibnitz, nor the absolute ideal- 
ism of Hegel, nor the positivism of Comte, 
nor the evolution of Spencer, has been able 
to satisfy the human mind and conscience. 
The fault has not been with philosophy, but 
with the philosopher. He has never been 
able to escape “ necessity.’ ’ The fact that 
evil exists has been taken as conclusive evi- 
dence that therefore it is something which 
ought to exist. Kant and Schiller regard 
evil as a necessary part of the transition of 
reason from a state of nature to that of cul- 
ture. In the greater part of their specula- 
tions they have overlooked the plans and 
purposes of the Infinite and viewed the pres- 
ent condition of the world, not as a result of 
man’s sin, but rather as a product of the 
divine will. Philosophy needs a vision of 
God before it can ever properly interpret 
man and nature. The province of philosophy 
says one “is not to dwell in caves, lit up by 
the feeble torchlights of the senses, but to 


The Fact in Philosophy 


125 


seek the transfigured heights of truth, and, 
discovering the long-lost and long-sought 
knowledge, pilot the race through the ave- 
nues of darkness to the jeweled throne of 
God.” The twentieth century is illustrative 
of the widely welcome fact that, while Chris- 
tianity is gradually becoming philosophic, 
philosophy is rapidly becoming Christian. 


















































V 




I 











V 


THE FACT IN THE ETHNIC 

FAITHS 


“ The good man is serene, the bad always in fear.” 

— Confucius. 


“ The very essence of life is evil, and in order to escape 
from being we must escape equally from merit and demerit.” 

— Buddha. 


“ Righteousness is not that ye turn your faces toward the 
east or the west ; but righteous is, one who believes in God, 
and the last day, and the angels, and the Book, and the 
prophets.” — The Koran. 


THE ETHNIC FAITHS 


Con-science precedes science. Ideas pre- 
cede actions. The origin of sin is philosoph- 
ical, while the existence of sin is historical. 
Before men wrote, God had written. The 
Egyptian hieroglyphics inscribed on tablets 
of clay and stone are but the imperfect trans- 
lations of the divine law written on the 
“fleshly tables’ ’ of men’s hearts. The sense 
of right and wrong is not of recent origin, but 
primal. It is not a nniversal acquirement, 
but a divine endowment. Before the thun- 
derings of Sinai and the accusing message 
of the prophet there was a still small voice 
which communed with the hearts of men. In 
every age the divine element in man has been 
seeking expression, but, like the shaded stalk 
that awaits the sun and shower, it lacked the 
life-giving rays of the Sun of Righteousness. 
Lamb taught that man was “an archangel 
slightly damaged,” while Milton said, “A 
9 129 


130 


The Fact of Sin 


good man was the ripe fruit our earth holds 
up to God. ’ ’ 

“In the beginning God” is the limit of 
the theologian and the scientist. In ethics, 
as in nature, the dawn may be even more 
beautiful than the noontide, although in 
utility the latter is of far more importance. 
“Ethics,” says Dr. Peabody, “is a sign-post 
on the way to religion. The interpretation 
of the teaching of Jesus in terms of ethics 
leads, as it were, to a threshold which the 
Teacher crosses to enter a room of which 
ethics has no key, and of which He says: 
‘I am the door.’ The relation of ethics to 
Christianity is that of the part to the whole. 
It is preliminary to that fuller revelation of 
law and duty we find in Christian revela- 
tion.” Our hasty review of the early ethical 
systems may serve as a preparation for the 
more complete and higher revelation which 
is to follow. Like the historian and the ar- 
cheologist, we may be allowed to visit the 
caves and catacombs in our search for evi- 
dence. 

In this survey we are not limited to any 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 131 

one age, language, or race, but we turn to 
all ages, all languages, and all races, and ex- 
claim, ‘ ‘ These are God ’s people ! 9 9 The foun- 
tain, we believe, was pure. The distinction 
between right and wrong is eternal, but re- 
vealed knowledge is needed to enable man 
to make the proper classification of things 
which are right and wrong. All men have 
the former, but only a part have the latter. 
Conscience is not the infallible oracle of God, 
but it is to man’s moral and spiritual life 
what hunger is to the physical well-being of 
humanity. It is possible to keep it normal 
and healthy and also possible for man to 
sear and harden it, so that it becomes ab- 
normal and untrustworthy. Thus we have 
an explanation of the condition and customs 
of primitive man. 

The present conception of sin is not a 
product of evolution, but the result of an in- 
ner revelation. Could we go back far enough, 
we would find not polytheism, but monothe- 
ism; not a fetich, but a Being of whom the 
fetich was only the outward symbol. We 
would find not impurity, but purity. The 


132 


The Fact of Sin 


true must exist before the counterfeit. Vir- 
tue must precede vice. God in times past 
spoke in divers manners, and all men are in 
some degree expressions of God ’s truth. The 
poet’s imagination aids the preacher’s de- 
livery. The artist with his canvas and brush 
instructs the eye as the orator does the in- 
tellect. The musician reaches the ethical 
through the aesthetic. God in some mysteri- 
ous way is blending all the discords of science 
and religion. The astronomer gladly wel- 
comes the light of the Sun of Righteousness. 
The botanist finds his highest ideal in the 
Rose of Sharon. The geologist’s grandest 
achievements center in the Rock of Ages. So 
we may some day find that, out of all the dis- 
cordant elements in science and religion God 
can bring a divine harmony. 

The fact of sin is not in any way inval- 
idated by a review of the false conceptions 
and attempted solutions which the non-Chris- 
tian systems have formulated. On the con- 
trary, we are led to approach it from varied 
viewpoints. In our search for the origin of 
ethics we go back as far as the fourth dynasty 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 133 

and find ourselves on the banks of the his- 
toric Nile — the 4 ‘ wonderland” of the Egyp- 
tian. On the still surface of this life-giving 
stream, where in ages past floated “the 
gilded barge of Cleopatra before the 
water of the Nile was turned into blood or 
Jacob had visited Thebes, — these ancient peo- 
ple were in possession of an extensive ethical 
code. Dr. R. W. Rogers claims that these 
Egyptians were doubtless indebted to the 
Babylonians for much of their civilization. 

Professor A. H. Sayce in his “Hibbert 
Lectures” states the Babylonian conception 
of evil very concisely in these words: “The 
divine powers worshiped had once been alike 
the creators of good and the creators of evil ; 
like the powers of nature which they repre- 
sented, they had been at once beneficent and 
malevolent. By degrees the two aspects of 
their character came to he separated. The 
higher gods came to he looked upon as the 
hearers of prayer and the bestowers of all 
good gifts, while the suffering and evil came 
from the inferior spirits of the lower sphere. 
But the old conception, which derived both 


134 


The Fact of Sin 


good and evil from the same source, did not 
wholly pass away. Evil never came to be 
regarded as the direct antagonist of good; 
it was rather the necessary complement and 
minister of good. The supreme Baal thus 
preserved his omnipotence, while at the 
same time the ideas of pain and injustice 
were dissociated from him. They believed 
nature had a harmful side, from which came 
destructive wind and storms, injustice and 
evil. ’ ’ 

The ethics of the Egyptians are of an un- 
usually high order for sueii an early period. 
“ Whether or not they worshiped sacred ani- 
mals, one thing is certain and incontestable, 
that the essential element of the Egyptian 
religion was man and his destiny. Let us 
not think that their religion was merely an 
atheistic philosophy, like Buddhism. No; 
the Egyptian believed in God, and also, on 
the same ground, in the immortality of the 
human soul, and that the guilty alone would 
be punished in the other wo rid .’ 9 Their 
ethical code of confession is found in the fol- 
lowing brief sentences : 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 135 

1. I have not been unjust. 

2. I have not stolen. 

3. I have not acted a lie. 

4. I have not committed adultery or any 
impure act. 

5. I have not blasphemed God. 

6. I have not debased God in my heart. 

7. I have not cursed my father. 

8. I have not used haughty words. 

9. I have not killed any man by treason. 

10. There is no fraud in my heart. 

In a study of the sacred books we find 
that they were familiar with a rule of right 
living, called “Maat.” The word is of fre- 
quent occurrence and signifies “a perfectly 
straight and inflexible rule.” It is from the 
root “Ma,” meaning “to stretch out,” and, 
like our word right, has reference primarily 
to law and order. “Mat,” says Renouf, “is 
law, not in the forensic sense of command 
issued either by human sovereign authority 
or by divine legislation, like the law of the 
Hebrews, but in the sense of the unerring 
order which governs the universe, whether 
in its physical or in its moral aspect.” This, 


136 


The Fact of Sin 


lie asserts, is a great and noble conception. 
In the Book of the Dead we have an account 
of one, of whom it was said: “He was the 
protector of the hnmble, a palm of abundance 
to the destitute, food to the hungry and the 
poor, largeness of heart to the weak. That 
which the great God hath done to him, that 
had He done to others/ ’ 

Bhys Davies says : 4 4 The triumph of right 
over wrong is the burden of nine-tenths of 
the Egyptian texts which have come down 
to us. Right is represented as a goddess 
ruling over heaven and earth and the world 
beyond the grave.” It is clearly seen in 
their references to piety, charity, chastity, 
gentleness, and self-command in word and 
act, that they were attempting to express an 
inner idea of morality, which must have been 
divinely implanted and was purer and higher 
than many of the later heathen cults. 

Hinduism is the all-embracing system of 
Indie religions. This cult goes back to the 
early Vedas, about the year 1500 B. C. A 
part of their writings were thought to be 
inspired. We find that these sacred books 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 137 

teach the eternity of the sonl and of matter. 
They also hold to a peculiar union of the 
soul and body which results in bondage. 
This bondage is escaped only through trans- 
migration, which is the root of all evil. Evil 
is overcome by indifference and absorption, 
the only true end of life. Existence is al- 
ways evil, and non-existence is the highest 
good. This principle would logically pre- 
clude their possessing any vital moral life. 

The harmony of existing evil and God’s 
justice is accounted for in the Vedanta sys- 
tem by saying that He was not independent 
of pre-existing conditions and that He found 
His material affected by former sins. The 
infinite soul being the real author of all our 
acts, we are thereby not responsible for 
wrong action. Though Hinduism is theistic 
and was at first monotheistic, and while the 
Aryan account of the creation and of man’s 
fall bears some resemblance to that of the 
Bible, still it possesses no Savior and no true 
conception of sin. Diet affects the whole 
moral and religious character. What a man 
eats is to them the index to his character. 


138 


The Fact of Sin 


The five great sins include “the drinking of 
spirituous liquors, killing a Brahman, steal- 
ing gold from a Brahman, adultery with the 
wife of a religious teacher, and the associa- 
tion with any one guilty of these crimes . 9 9 At 
best this is a very superficial and narrow con- 
ception of even natural evil. The absence of 
any spiritual vision of the inner life as con- 
trasted with the rules of external conduct 
rendered them incapable of knowing the real 
content of sin. 

About six centuries before the advent of 
the world’s great Teacher with His “glad 
tidings of peace on earth and good will to 
men,” when all China was in confusion and 
disorder, when men were immersed in tran- 
scendentalism, there appeared in the Celes- 
tial Empire a man named Confucius, who said 
to the people, “I show you a more excellent 
way.” Present duty, the pathway to future 
glory, was the keynote of this new moral 
harmony. “A transforming power,” says 
Mencius, “went abroad. Dishonesty and dis- 
solution hid their heads. Loyalty and good 
faith became the characteristics of men, and 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 139 

chastity and teachableness that of the 
women.” Right living was to honor yonr 
ancestors. Salvation was to be gained 
through good citizenship. The five cardinal 
virtues of Confncins were expressed in the 
following words : Benevolence, duty, de- 
corum, knowledge, and faith. 

Twenty-five centuries of almost stagnant 
life can alone give us any proper valuation 
of such principles when they rest on human 
standards and depend on purely subjective 
practice. We hear much said in praise of the 
golden rule which Confucius gave to his peo- 
ple. It is stated as follows: “What you do 
not like when done to yourself, do not that 
to others.” This we are compelled to 
classify as a narrow and selfish rule of life. 
Negation is not virtue, nor does it imply sin- 
lessness. Such a command is unworthy of 
comparison with the Christian Golden Rule, 
which requires a definite, positive life of 
self-sacrifice in behalf of the needy and help- 
less. One prohibits certain forms of wrong- 
doing, while the other commands losing one ’s 
life in service for others. Their lack of any 


140 


The Fact of Sin 


other ideal except that which is merely 
human, opens the way for universal oppres- 
sion and injustice. Having no true idea of 
virtue and holiness, it was impossible for 
them to have any doctrine of sin, or to feel 
any conscious need of a Savior. 

From the Dead Sea of China’s ancestral 
idolatry we turn to Persia and find the re- 
ligion of Zoroaster. This was the faith of 
the immortal Cyrus and Xerxes. The central 
thought is dualism, and a modern and modi- 
fied form of this teaching still exists. The 
conflict between right and wrong is repre- 
sented by two gods — Ormuzd, the good, and 
Ahriman, the evil-minded; but above this di- 
vision of good and evil is an eternal primitive 
being, Zeruane akerene, in which both prin- 
ciples have their origin. Men are taught to 
hate the evil as the good soldier does the 
banner of his foe. 

Loathe sin; abhor sin; go not near it, 
preaches the Sufi. 

“Avoid an evil doer as you would a brand, 

Which, lighted, burns ; extinguished, soils the hand.” 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 141 

The code of morals consists of four laws : 

Piety , consisting chiefly in the worship of 
Ormnzd by a repetition of hymns and 
prayers. 

Purity — “Pure thoughts, pure words, and 
pure deeds.” They had a moral and a legal 
purity. Their idea of the former was similar 
to the Christian view, embracing even the 
secret thoughts of the heart. 

Veracity. The crowning virtue of the 
Persians was truthfulness. 

Industry. The cultivation of the soil was 
looked upon as a solemn religious duty, and 
an individual's character was estimated by 
his devotion to work as well as worship. 

We find in this system a short account of 
the fall of man. ‘ ‘ Yima, the first man, dwelt 
in a happy paradise. The serpent of Ahri- 
man lied to him and effected his ruin. As 
a result the whole condition of the earth was 
changed and all men came under the power 
of evil. The majesty of the heavens passed 
away in the form of a bird. ” 

The Persian was taught to hate evil and 
to love the good for its own sake. They also 


142 


The Fact of Sin 


had a materialistic notion of the resurrec- 
tion, which some have attempted to explain 
as the source of the Jewish doctrine. While 
Zoroaster was a monotheist, he based his 
religion on philosophic instead of revealed 
truth. The origin of sin is not attributed 
to God in this system, hut the nature and 
seat of evil are both out of accord with the 
Christian view. The optimistic declaration 
that the good will eventually triumph over 
the evil is in a general sense true to the 
Bible teaching. 

Buddhism came before us as an offshoot 
of Brahmanism and as a protest against its 
corruptions. It was about the year 500 B. C. 
that a man of a melancholy disposition, sick 
of pleasure, and saddened by the world’s sin 
and distress, left his home to seek consola- 
tion in asceticism. Six years of self-morti- 
fication and persistent effort to rid himself 
of all vain desires gave him the victory, and 
out from under the “Bo Tree” he started 
on a journey to teach his new doctrine, which 
included : 

(a) The fact of sorrow; 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 143 

(b) The cause of sorrow; 

(c) The removal of sorrow by the de- 
struction of desire. 

According to Spence Hardy, the Bud- 
hist traditions mention a fall of man. 
“When certain former worlds were de- 
stroyed, a colony of supernatural men were 
placed upon the earth. They lived without 
need of food and could fly through the air. 
They lived for ages in peace. At length they 
ate a substance (a scum) found on the sur- 
face of the earth, and thenceforth knew good 
and evil and fell to the earthly condition.” 

In addition to this account of man’s fall 
they mention an inborn element (Trishma) 
of desires tending to lead men to evil. This 
is a misfortune resulting from a former 
state and bears some analogy to our inher- 
ited depravity. 

“The doing” (Kharma) is a man’s “rec- 
ord,” the consequences and liabilities of his 
acts. One man’s guilt passes over to some 
new-born babe or animal which is entirely 
innocent, yet this is held to be a necessary 
requirement of eternal justice. This new be- 


144 


The Fact of Sin 


in g lias no knowledge or memory of the pre- 
ceding life, and does not even know for what 
sins he suffers, nor whose they were. Bud- 
dhism claims that all punishment has a cor- 
rective character, and this is involved in 
“the monstrous cruelty and injustice of the 
doctrine of transmigration. ’ ’ 

The Buddhist decalogue comprises the 
following moral precepts : 

1. Thou shalt not kill. 

2. Thou shalt not steal. 

3. Thou shalt not lie. 

4. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

5. Thou shalt not get drunk. 

The above apply to all men. 

6. Thou shalt not offend in diet. 

7. Thou shalt not indulge in amusements. 

8. Thou shalt not use ornaments or per- 

fume. 

9. Thou shalt not sleep on luxurious 

beds. 

10. Thou shalt not have silver or gold. 

The last five pertain only to religious 
orders. 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 145 

These are common maxims of morality, 
bnt they lack the recognition of God and the 
idea of sin against Him. We find here no 
reference to the inner life of the transgressor. 
They speak of errors and acts of injustice 
toward man, but they can have no deep con- 
ception of evil because they have no true 
idea of God. They subdivide the ten sins 
of their system into the three following di- 
visions : 

Those of the body — - 

1. Taking life. 

2. Theft. 

3. Unlawful sexual intercourse. 

Those of speech — 

1. Lying. 

2. Slander. 

3. Abuse — swearing. 

4. Vain conversation. 

Those of the mind — 

1. Covetousness. 

2. Malice. 

3. Skepticism. This means to deny 
everything in this world and the 
next, the Buddha and the law, the 


10 


146 


The Fact of Sin 


effect of moral causes, birth, trans- 
migration and the existence here or 
hereafter. 

Thns far have these hnman philosophers 
straggled with the problem of evil, bnt 
neither Buddha, nor Zoroaster, nor Confu- 
cius, nor Gautama, has been successful in 
the attempt to formulate a rational theodicy. 

We enter the seventh century with Chris- 
tianity victorious over nearly all her enemies 
in the Eastern empire. About the year 622 
there appeared a new factor in the religious 
world — “a power which would threaten the 
whole fabric of civilization and change the 
map of the known world.’ ’ Arabia issued 
from her obscurity. Mecca became the cen- 
ter of a new religious idea, centering in the 
life of Mohammed, the prophet of Allah. 
This new teacher claimed to have received 
his doctrines as a divine revelation. He 
preached a system of salvation from sin pe- 
culiar to the Koran. “Man consists of a 
material part, the body; and an immaterial 
part, the soul. The soul, being the active 
principle, is that which desires good and 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 147 

evil.” The seat of sin is therefore not in 
the flesh alone. The sense of sin is aroused 
experimentally. It was this that drove Mo- 
hammed to the cave of Hira. 4 ‘ When he 
found assurance he found it in the sense of 
pardon. ’ ’ 

The fact of sin and ill-desert was not 
thereby abolished, it was rather established. 
The thought of the judgment took strong 
hold on him, just because he so strongly re- 
alized the fact of sin in himself. What he 
experienced in himself he observed in others. 
The call to preach, of which he was so viv- 
idly conscious, was based upon the convic- 
tion that his contemporaries were in sin and 
under the wrath of God. But it should be 
understood that “sin was not the essence of 
his hell, nor holiness a characteristic of his 
heaven.’ ’ It is thought that Mohammed’s 
doctrine of the universality of sin was based 
largely on his personal experience. 

We find in the Koran several accounts 
of the fall of man. 6 ‘ The Garden of Paradise, 
where Adam and his wife were created, was 
heaven. God commands the angels to bow 


148 


The Fact of Sin 


down to Adam as His vicegerents. All obey 
except Iblis, who refuses on the ground that 
Adam is his inferior. Iblis is then expelled 
from the garden because of his arrogance, 
but is permitted to become the tempter of 
man. Adam and his wife are commanded 
not to eat of one tree in the garden, and are 
warned against the wiles of Satan. Never- 
theless Satan causes them to disobey, and 
both tempter and tempted are cast down to 
earth to live in mutual enmity until the final 
day of doom.” 

This embodies Mohammed’s theory of the 
origin of sin. It was to him a very simple 
matter — sin is disobedience to the commands 
of God. There is an implied organic trans- 
mission of sin, or at least a tendency toward 
evil. Sin finds its origin in the conflict of 
the natural desires of men and the com- 
mand of God. Salvation from sin must come 
through faith in Allah, or certain judgments 
would follow in the life to come. The Cal- 
vinism of this system is very marked. Mo- 
hammed had a high notion of God’s sover- 
eignty, but a false notion of man. Evil as 


The Fact in the Ethnic Faiths 149 


well as good comes by the appointment of 
God. He creates the sonl and “ breathes into 
it its wickedness and piety. He misleadeth 
whom He will, and gnideth whom He will. ,, 
Hnman freedom is denied and sin is merely 
an expression of that which has been divinely 
necessitated. 

The valne of these crude systems is 
largely in their indirect relation to the Chris- 
tian conception of sin as revealed in the New 
Testament writings. They prove that in all 
men and in all ages there has existed a dis- 
tinction between good and evil and a dom- 
inant desire for some means of escape from 
the certain results of guilt and sin. 


I 




VI 

THE FACT IN THE OLD 
TESTAMENT 


“The thought of his heart was only evil continually.” 

— Moses. 


“Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned and done 
this evil.” — David. 


“ To obey is better than sacrifice.” 

— Samuel. 


“ A new heart also will I give you.” 

— Ezekiel. 


IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Fact of Sin finds its deepest and 
clearest expression in the total teaching of 
the Bible. Any view that discards either of 
the dispensations is incomplete and unsatis- 
factory. It is a large step from pagan phi- 
losophy to divine revelation. “Sin,” says 
Principal Fairbairn, “is a religious term in- 
telligible only in the realm of religious ex- 
perience and thought. ‘Evil’ is a philosoph- 
ical term, and denotes every condition, cir- 
cumstance, or act that in any manner or de- 
gree interferes with complete perfection or 
happiness of being, whether physical, meta- 
physical, or moral. ‘Vice’ is an ethical term; 
it is moral evil interpreted as an offense 
against the ideal or law given in the nature 
of man. ‘ Crime ’ is a legal term and denotes 
the open or public violation of law which a 
society or State has framed for its own pres- 
ervation and the protection of its members. 

153 


154 


The Fact of Sin 


Sin differs from all these in this respect: 
they may be in a system which knows no God, 
but without God there can be no sin.” God 
has spoken to us through His Son, but in 
times past through prophets and holy men, 
who spoke as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost. “Throughout the Old Testament we 
can trace an increasing moral sensitiveness, 
a conviction of sin that becomes more acute 
and painful as the manifestations of God’s 
holiness grow more distinct. It becomes a 
personal affront to God. Its loathesomeness 
in His sight, its defilement disqualifying the 
man for God ’s service and making him trem- 
ble and cower in God ’s presence, are realized 
by the Hebrew conscience with piercing vivid- 
ness.” 

All through the Old Testament sin is pic- 
tured in the crimson and scarlet tint of God’s 
judgments against disobedience, but when 
we come to the New Testament love por- 
trays its awfulness in the vicarious atone- 
ment of the Son of God. “The Old Testa- 
ment,” says Fuller, “will still be a New 
Testament to him who comes with a fresh de- 


The Fact in the Old Testament 155 

sire for information. ” The question of an 
inspired revelation is not the basis of onr 
Christian living, bnt onr Christian living 
becomes our best apology for the inspiration 
of Scripture. On the human side sin needs 
to be explained at every moral level, but on 
the divine side Truth is the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever. God’s laws which gov- 
ern nature never change, but man’s knowl- 
edge of them advances. The Infinite is con- 
stantly compelled to repeat in regretful re- 
serve, “I have many things to say unto you, 
but you can not bear them now.” We shall 
interpret the teaching of the Old Testament 
not by what men do, but by what God says. 
The sincere student of the Word will not 
only find human imperfection , but a richness 
of divine perfection in the Old Testament 
Scripture. 

The first example we have of sacrificial 
gifts and worship is that of Cain and Abel. 
Why does God reject one offering and accept 
the other? The answer is found in the state- 
ment that He demands “not sacrifice, but 
obedience.” Sin croucheth at the door of 


156 


The Fact of Sin 


him who doeth not well. God looked at the 
character behind the offering. Then, as 
now, the spirit of the giver determines the 
valne of the gift. Obedience as an expres- 
sion of the inner life constitutes the un- 
changing standard of acceptance and rejec- 
tion. 

The sin of Sodom consisted in the ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of the individual before 
the Lord. He is not only faulty before men 
and nations, but guilty in the sight of a holy 
God who sanctions no immorality in the ex- 
tension of His kingdom. We find in the sixth 
verse of the twentieth chapter of Genesis 
that adultery is spoken of, not merely as a 
physical evil, but in the heart of the individ- 
ual it becomes a crime against Him who takes 
knowledge not only of the external conduct, 
but of the inner life and motives. 

The writer in Exodus speaks of a sin 
which was not only against Aaron, but was 
a great sin against the Lord. Plagues in 
Egypt, and milk and honey in Canaan, are 
only secondary results of sin and righteous- 
ness. Individuals were led away from the 


The Fact in the Old Testament 157 

thought of mere external action to the deeper 
inward reality of evil. 

In Leviticus we would naturally expect 
to find sin represented only as a ceremonial 
uncleanness and wholly external in its char- 
acter. But while the outward act may meas- 
ure the imperfect conceptions of men, yet 
God, whether in speaking to the whole 6 ‘ con- 
gregation,” to a ‘ ‘ ruler ,’ 9 or to one of the 
“common people,” He always traced the act 
to a divine command and to an inner guilt. 

In the following passage from Deuter- 
onomy we have an approach to Paul’s teach- 
ing as to unavailing circumcision. 4 ‘ Circum- 
cise therefore the foreskin of your heart.” 
They were to serve not men, hut the Lord, 
and to have the source of all their acts in 
the heart. 

Achan answered Joshua and said, “In- 
deed I have sinned against the Lord God of 
Israel.” This is a conception of sin worthy 
of the New Testament revelation. It is 
counted a personal violation of divine law 
which brings a deep consciousness of guilt. 
We can easily postulate the fact from this 


158 


The Fact of Sin 


verse that “sin is personal and the sinner 
without excuse/ ’ 

In Samuel we read that “when one man 
sinned against another they might find a me- 
diator, but when a man sinned against the 
Lord there was no person able to do this.” 
Certainly we have here a very clear con- 
ception of the deep-dyed taint of sin. No 
sacrifice and no earthly judge was equal to 
the task. Have we not here a conception of 
the need of an atoning Christ? 

When we come to the “sweet singer” of 
Israel we find presented not only a high 
standard of national righteousness, but per- 
haps the highest conception of personal 
purity found anywhere in the Old Testament. 
In the Fifty-first Psalm the writer’s deep 
conviction and true repentance find expres- 
sion in the words : “Against Thee, Thee only, 
have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. 
Create in me a clean heart and renew a right 
spirit within me.” 

Amos, the first great prophet-preacher in 
the Northern kingdom, used the word trans- 
gression very frequently when speaking of 


The Fact in the Old Testament 159 

the different nations. He portrays their 
“mighty sins’ ’ and then gives the message 
of the Lord, “Seek me and live.” 

The prophecy of Isaiah presents a high 
ideal of purity and anticipates the New Tes- 
tament notion of sin and guilt. The author 
lays down certain principles that are worthy 
of a place in gospel teaching. Sacrifices are 
mockery to God when offered by evil men. 
Purity must precede prayers and acceptable 
service. Blood-red and scarlet sins may all 
he made white as snow. There is no Calvin- 
istic teaching, but the wider welcome that 
says, “whosoever will” may come and be 
saved. Severe and certain judgment is re- 
served for all unrepentant sinners. Holy, 
holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts. His 
glory is the fullness of the whole earth. 
They were enabled to grasp the true nature 
of sin because of the completeness of their 
conception of the holiness of Him against 
whom all sin is committed. All men, in the 
language of the Hebrew text, are “chatath;” 
i. e., they have all come short of possible obe- 
dience and missed the mark. But the poor 


160 


The Fact of Sin 


marksmanship and the stumbling in the race 
were self-induced failures, and for that rea- 
son God designated them as sins, and man’s 
innate sense of obligation approved the 
verdict. 

We are safe in saying that “ Truth is 
truth since God is God,” and can never, in 
any age or with any people, be anything else. 
Truth finds its unity in the immutability of 
the absolute, and while this is true, yet God 
measures men by motives as well as by acts. 
The schoolmaster (law) must accommodate 
his methods to his pupils. The people must 
first gain some knowledge of the nature of 
sin and feel a sense of need, that the way 
may be prepared for the redemption fom sin. 

Imperfect subjects can not render perfect 
service, but they may have perfect motives 
and a complete consecration. The Mosaic 
legislation is not equal to the Sermon on the 
Mount. The prophecy of Isaiah may not be 
of equal value with the Gospel of John. The 
preaching of Amos may appear to us to be 
inferior to that of Paul. But the relative 
consecration and service was as complete 


The Fact in the Old Testament 161 

for that age as ours is for this present cen- 
tury. Then, as now, sin was heart-crime 
against God. Talents and times may differ, 
but the degree of faithfulness required by 
the Lord remains the same. The Christian 
in the coming century may come a little 
nearer God’s ideal for man, but error will 
never become truth, nor disobedience obedi- 
ence. The sad undertone of sin is no less a 
part of life now than in times past. 

In a study of Bruce’s “Ethics of the Old 
Testament” we gain the following conclu- 
sions which seem to be drawn from the life 
which the Book produces, aside from the 
failure of man to grasp the full meaning of 
God: 

The ethical principles were always receiv- 
ing new developments under divine guidance. 

Israel rose to higher and higher “plat- 
forms of ethics,” while surrounding nations 
remained at the lowest level of morality. 

The life lived under the Mosaic rule was 
a life of restraint and obedience to an exter- 
nal law. 

The law fulfilled two purposes: brought 
ll 


162 


The Fact of Sin 


about and maintained a theocratic union be- 
tween God and the nation. Law entered that 
the offense might abound. 

In both pro-Exilic and post-Exilic writ- 
ing righteousness is praised as above all law 
and ceremony. 

Ezekiel and Daniel are not exceptions, as 
some claim. Ritualism was to them not a 
matter of place and time, but of heart and 
conscience. 

The moral ideal of the prophets is always 
a lofty one. We find here the prophetic pic- 
ture of the golden age, when the Law was to 
be written on the heart; the righteous king 
was to execute justice on the earth ; the stony 
heart was to be taken away and a new spirit 
put within them. There was to be a great na- 
tional regeneration, and righteousness would 
flow down the streets like streams of water. 
The historic realization of all this is to be 
found in Jesus Christ. It could not be ac- 
complished by the Law ; but the Law was the 
“pedagogue” to lead men to Christ. The 
dark night of legalism must necessarily pre- 
cede the dawning of the Sun of Righteous- 


ness. 


VII 


THE FACT IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT 


“ Sin is the transgression of the Law.” 

—John. 


“ Sin is not imputed where there is no Law.” 

—Paul. 


“ To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it 
not, to him it is sin.” — James. 


“ The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.” 

— Jesus. 


IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


The Christian idea of sin has its real 
genesis in the life of the Son of God. The 
darkness of evil deepens as the light of 
Christ is revealed. He came not to make 
void the legalism of the Old Testament, but 
to fulfill it. God remains the same, but 
man enters on a new spiritual plane. The 
new revelation brought new responsibilities, 
but did not release men entirely from the 
old ones. It was still necessary for the di- 
vine teacher to state, “I have many things 
to say unto you, but ye can not bear them 
now. ’ ’ Law still determines lawlessness, and 
love of purity demands justice in dealing 
with impurity. In our study of the New Tes- 
tament we find sin expressed in at least three 
phases, or relations, and for convenience the 
passages will be classified under these di- 
visions. 

Law, when viewed in its relation to God ’s 
165 


166 


The Fact of Sin 


sovereignty, loses its legal phase, and 
through its universality it becomes moral. 
We find a marked distinction between the 
common lawbreaker who transgresses the 
law, not out of any real hatred to the law 
in itself, but for gain and self-gratification; 
and the man who rebels against authority be- 
cause he hates the whole principle of law and 
government. The first instance is merely 
that of the common thief who loves money, 
while the other one is that of the bold and 
defiant anarchist. The latter’s action is the 
expression of an utter contempt for all law, 
regardless of the holiness and justice of the 
lawgiver. We find such a status of life ex- 
pressed in the Greek word “anonim.” This 
may be interpreted as a form of selfishness 
which expresses itself in hatred of God as 
well as of man. 

Sin in a forensic sense may be defined as 
non-conformity to divine law. It is proper 
to state in this connection that there is a 
divine element in statute law and also in the 
laws of nature. But law in the sense in 
which Paul uses it has at least three func- 


The Fact in the New Testament 167 

tions. It is, first of all, the measuring line 
(“parabasis”), which determines the extent 
of our transgression. The natural man op- 
poses law, and in that case it tends to pro- 
voke transgression. The third function is 
preventive, in that it aids man to avoid evil. 
Paul would have us understand that there 
must be a law before there can be transgres- 
sion, or “a going-over. ’ ’ We do not all sin 
after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, 
yet we all sin. 

Sin was in the world before the law, but 
sin is not imputed (reckoned) where there 
is no law. Law does not in any sense create 
sin, but it marks the line and warns us 
against crossing over it. It is the mirror of 
divine holiness, which reflects the distorted 
image of the transgressor, contrasting the 
true image of Him whose likeness we bear. 
By steadfastly beholding ourselves in it we 
are changed from character to character. 
We are to compare our marred image with 
the true likeness of Christ’s sinlessness as the 
artist compares and retouches the imperfect 
painting, having constantly before him a per- 


168 


The Fact of Sin 


feet ideal. 4 'If we reject,” says Miiller, 
‘ ‘ the distinction between moral integrity and 
moral perfection, and maintain that there is 
no difference between opposition to law and 
non-conformity to law, it follows that we 
must also reject every gradational distinc- 
tion of moral goodness.’ ’ 

Knowledge of the law and consciousness 
of transgression are among the necessary an- 
tecedents of guilt and sin. No law in this 
system means no transgression, and no trans- 
gression implies no sin. The real sinner is 
not a man without the law, but a man under 
it and rebelling against it. Trench claims 
that "the original law and revelation of the 
right preceded the Mosaic law and is written 
on the hearts of all, and as this in no human 
heart is completely obliterated, all sin, even 
of the savage, must in a secondary sense be 
a violation of this older though partially ob- 
scured law.” 

In the First Epistle of John he speaks of 
sin as "the transgression of the law.” The 
word is here used not figuratively, not as 
a concrete action, but as an abstract prin- 


The Fact in the New Testament 169 

ciple. Sin is a condition from which come 
acts of transgression. A man may commit 
but two transgressions during a day, yet he 
is a sinner during the whole intervening time, 
and continues in that state until he seeks 
forgiveness. We may transgress a law which 
refers to our neighbor or one directly related 
to God, yet in the last analysis the acts are 
both against God. Sin in the higher analysis 
is not so much a transgression of law as an 
act of disobedience against the will of our 
Heavenly Father. It has to do with a living 
will as well as a divine law. 

The law in the Christie sense is a spiritual 
ideal, ‘ ‘ quick and powerful, and sharper than 
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the 
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of 
the joints and marrow ’ ’ — “a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the heart . 9 9 The law 
extends even into the inner chamber of the 
heart and reveals the secret transgressions 
of thought and inclination. Love is the ful- 
filling of the law, but willful transgression is 
enmity against God. 

While sin is a unit in its real nature, yet 


170 


The Fact of Sin 


it has special manifestations and relations. 
Dr. Curtis, in his volume entitled ‘ 6 The 
Christian Faith,” gives three definitions of 
personal sin : u Theologically it is responsible 
lawlessness in self-decision, ethically it is a 
self-conscious violation of the moral judg- 
ment, while practically it may be termed self- 
ishness.’ J This is merely a statement of the 
same thing as it may be viewed by different 
individuals. We are aware of the fact that 
the twelve or more words which are used by 
the Biblical writers often occur interchanged, 
but they still have individual meanings which 
are frequently expressed by New Testament 
writers. There are three words that are 
most commonly used in personal relations. 
The best example of this subjective reference 
is the word “hamarita.” This word refers to 
the inability which prevents the attainment 
of some required aim or object set before us, 
rather than the rightness or wrongness of 
the aim or object in itself. The latter is de- 
fined by other words which refer directly 
to the moral character of the motive and the 
action. 


The Fact in the New Testament 171 

Paul states that “by one man sin entered 
into the world, and death by sin.” In this 
passage the word “death” may be taken to 
include physical, spiritual, and eternal death. 
The word “sin” occurs more than one hun- 
dred and fifty times in the New Testament, 
and usually refers to the nature and state 
of the sinner who by outward and inward 
acts of transgression has placed himself un- 
der condemnation. In Greek philosophy it 
is an error of the intellect, which explains 
Plato ’s notion of sin. In the writings of 
Homer it is used in referring to marksman- 
ship and without any ethical content. While 
Paul always uses it in an ethical sense, it can 
not be taken to describe the goal, nor the 
course that leads to the goal, but rather the 
man in the race. 

Sin is an alienation from God and an 
isolation from good. It is the fatal bias 
which ‘ ‘ twists the conscience, taints the 
blood, and causes a malformation of the 
will.” It is self-imposed spiritual death, 
which includes the hardening of the heart 
and the deadening of the conscience. It is 


m 


The Fact of Sin 


possible that in some cases spiritual death 
may he complete in this life. The sinner 
reaches a place where divine grace fails to 
reach him and restoration to repentance be- 
comes impossible. In the fifth chapter of 
Romans Paul refers to spiritual deafness by 
the nse of the word “parakoe,” which means 
unwillingness to hear the voice of God call- 
ing to obedience and perfection. Sin seems 
to have severed the vital connection which 
the Father desires to have with His children. 
In the account of the stoning of Stephen, 
“who, being filled with the Holy Spirit, was 
declaring unto them their own wickedness, 
his persecutors cried out with a loud voice 
and stopped their ears and rushed upon him 
with one accord.” 

“Sin is the transgression of the law.” 
But there are some sins which are not in- 
cluded in this definition. It is sinful for a 
child not to love a parent, and for a parent 
not to love a child; but love is not a volition 
and can not be commanded by the will. 
“Envy, jealousy, covetousness, suspicion, 
and distrust, pride, vanity — all these are sin- 


The Fact in the New Testament 173 

ful; they are resisted by the good man be- 
cause they are sinful; they have no place in 
a heart perfectly free from sin. ,, Men 
finally, as Dr. Denney says, come to repent 
not only of what they have done , but repent 
of what they are in their own sinful lives. 
That expresses concisely the New Testament 
conception of sin and prepares the way for 
that true repentance by which individuals 
are born out of self into God, and out of the 
lower life of the natural into that more abun- 
dant life of the spiritual. 


VIII 

THE FACT AND ITS ORIGIN 


“ The account in Genesis is not an allegory nor a myth 
nor a mere legend or tradition; it is an historical fact re- 
vealed by God to the first men and preserved in the primitive 
style of narration characteristic of the age in which it was 
written. The Eden story was intended to make known the 
fact that evil in the world had its origin in disobedience to 
the Divine command. The account is historical, but, as in 
other cases, is given in the narrative form. Man fell into 
sin by yielding to temptation and thus forfeited that which 
had been originally provided for him, and brought not only 
upon himself, but upon the posterity the curse of evil in its 
various forms. He failed under the trial to which his 
Creator subjected him.” — President W. R. Harper. 


“ Man fell as a moral person responsibly free, and the ex- 
ternal form of the temptation, whether this or that, could 
make no essential difference. . . . 

“ Let a father once say to a child, in the name of higher 
concern, ‘ Thou shalt not!’ and there will be the personal 
battle of Eden all over again. God did not want transgres- 
sion, but He did want the possibility of it, because He 
wanted personal sainthood. All evil in possibility is the 
awful price which had to be paid for any personal sainthood.” 

— “The Christian Faith,” Prof. O. A. Curtis. 


THE ORIGIN 


Christian doctrine is very intimately as- 
sociated with the fact of sin. A clear under- 
standing of the Christian conception of moral 
evil is fundamental to the work of the true 
theologian. It was the destructive work of 
humanity that called for the reconstructive 
work of divinity. Had Adam remained obe- 
dient to the divine command — and that we 
conceive to have been a “possibility” — then 
there would have been no special necessity 
for the incarnation, no need for regenera- 
tion or justification, and, likewise, no Geth- 
semane and Calvary. The introduction of 
sin into the world not only brought ruin to 
man, but sorrow to God. 

The question before us is of supreme im- 
portance because of its vital relation to the 
moral responsibility of man and to the jus- 
tice of God. The false theories that have 
been advanced as to the origin of sin have 
been causal to the greater part of the diffi- 
12 177 


178 


The Fact of Sin 


culties which confront the theologian and the 
philosopher. The theories advanced are 
many and of varied value. In this discussion 
we shall refer only to a few of the more 
important ones. 

Among the many speculations as to the 
origin of sin we find the theory of the Pre- 
Adamites. The chief exponent of this theory 
is Professor Winchell, the famous geologist. 
He does not deny the unity of the race, nor 
the doctrine of the atonement; he simply de- 
nies that Adam was the first man. “Adam 
descended from a black race, not the black 
race from Adam.” The proof from the 
Scriptures is of little value, owing to the 
fact that his references are all to obscure and 
disputed passages. The marking of Cain, 
lest any finding him should slay him. He 
asks, “Who are these enemies?” The 
“sons of God” (Gen. vi, 1-4) married the 
“daughters of men.” He infers that the 
“sons of God” were Pre-Adamites, and that 
the ‘ ‘ daughters of men belonged to the 
Adamites.” While these facts may have 
some plausibility, the whole sweep of Bible 


The Fact and Its Origin 179 

teaching and the fundamental doctrines of 
our faith unite in holding to the teaching of 
Genesis that Adam was the first man. The 
invalidity of the theory destroys its bearing 
on the doctrine of sin. But if it were as- 
sumed to be true, the result would be merely 
an antedating of the source to a more ob- 
scure and almost wholly traditional sphere 
of thought. 

The theory of the pre-existence of souls 
is of no practical value. It holds that sin is 
a result of pre-existent sins. Dr. Raymond 
says, “They would make this world either a 
prison for the punishment of sin or the hos- 
pital for its cure, or perhaps partly both.” 

Creationism allows the body to descend 
from human parents, but at each birth God 
creates a new soul. The race, according to 
this theory, has a bodily relation, but not a 
spiritual one. “Depravity is inherent in the 
material body, and in that way God is con- 
nected only with the good ; that is, the soul. ’ ’ 
The origin and transmission of sin are lim- 
ited to the natural man. This would require 
us to look upon evil as inherent in matter. 


180 


The Fact of Sin 


This also destroys the real nature of sin 
by separating it from all except the physical 
nature of man. Spirits could not be evil, 
owing to their lack of physical bodies, and 
thus death becomes a form of redemption. 

The Human Limitation theory claims that 
man’s finiteness is sufficient to explain 
the origin and universality of sin. Leibnitz, 
in support of this theory, states that “sin 
has of necessity arisen from the original im- 
perfection of the creature.” This would 
make God the author of evil, in that he was 
unable to give man a perfect nature in the 
beginning. We would be led to conclude that 
sin is merely the result of a weak and lim- 
ited human nature, which would free the 
agent of guilt. Evil would be “good in the 
making, or holiness in the germ.” The re- 
morse of conscience clearly proves that sin 
ought not to have been committed and, there- 
fore, might have been avoided. 

Liberty of choice is not limitation, but the 
very opposite. Human sovereignty is God’s 
highest gift to man. The author of this the- 
ory has confused the terms “origin” and 


The Fact and Its Origin 181 

“possibility.” The difference between the 
two is as great as that between existence and 
non-existence. The “possibility” naturally 
resulting from moral freedom is neither sin 
nor the cause of sin. Finiteness may be the 
“occasion” of evil, but it is never the primal 
cause. Between the “ability” to do the 
wrong and the executive volition which is es- 
sential to its actuality, there is the human 
will, whose decision is final. Man’s fall was 
the result of the misuse of self-intrusted 
power rather than any divinely imposed lim- 
itation. 

The real limitation is not in man as a 
human being, or in God as God, but in God 
as related to man’s sphere of life. Freewill 
was an essential to the plan and purpose of 
the Infinite. The fact that it was a moral 
impossibility for God to create perfect holy 
beings, does not in any way interfere with His 
attributes. Character is a result of freedom 
of choice and can not be imposed by creation. 
The limitation here referred to is self-im- 
posed and in support of the divine plan. We 
have not in any way interfered with the di- 


182 


The Fact of Sin 


vine Omnipotence and Omniscience, and at 
the same time have preserved His justice and 
goodness by freeing Him from the author- 
ship of evil. He is not the author of evil, but 
only the “possibility” of evil. Hr. Marten- 
sen states in his Christian Dogmatics that 
“it is only the possibility of evil that admits 
of demonstration. But evil is just that pos- 
sibility which ought to have remained a possi- 
bility. Its realization, therefore, can only be 
conceived as arising from the free will of the 
creature . ’ 9 If we interpret the word * 1 possi- 
bility” in a narrow, physical sense, then it is 
more possible for me to cast myself from 
the top of a precipice than it is to ascend, 
and yet, when we consider man in his total- 
ity, we find the destructive “possibility” 
very powerfully guarded. The acknowledged 
fact that it is possible for every man to com- 
mit suicide does not admit of the inference 
that the “possibility” is going to be univer- 
sally actualized, nor can we even say that 
it is in any way causal to suicide. We have 
found the “possibility” of sin, but the real 
cause must be sought back of this in the free 
choice and self-assertive power of the agent. 


The Fact and Its Origin 183 

The Calvinists haye not spent much time 
on the construction of new theories as to 
how sin came into existence, but have, on 
the other hand, sought to defend the postu- 
lates of their own doctrines. Their work has 
necessarily been defensive. They have at- 
tempted to harmonize the origin of sin with 
their doctrine of decrees and foreordination. 
To them it is not a question of experience and 
consciousness, but a metaphysical specula- 
tion in defense of a system. The main issue 
is regarding the sovereignty of God. They 
would have a part of the race predestined 
to final glory, and the rest passed by, or 
rather, elected to eternal damnation. This 
would make God absolute and remove all pos- 
sibility of failure in His plans. The idea of 
free agency to their method of thought would 
be a sign of faulty judgment on God’s part. 
Therefore man’s future destiny must be de- 
creed from the beginning. 

In the solution of the problem of sin and 
its origin the Word of God is our most 
authentic source of information. Not rea- 
son, but Scripture and reason. Not con- 


The Fact of Sin 


184 

science, but Christ and conscience. Con- 
sciousness must relate itself to revelation. 
Reason and judgment must revert to the ab- 
solute for final decision. Martensen in his 
Christian Dogmatics states that “in the Mo- 
saic account of the fall of man we meet with a 
combination of history and sacred symbolism, 
a figurative representation of an actual event. 
The fruit is the glittering world phenome- 
non, which invites man to enjoy it and to 
make himself possessor. The serpent, on the 
other hand, is the worldly principle, which 
gives the world phenomenon a significance 
for the human consciousness. Without show- 
ing man the fruit, the serpent could never 
have obtained access to man; for a tempting 
principle which is notable to point to some 
corresponding reality, which has splendors 
to offer, is only a feeble shadow. No sin is 
committed without the presence of both fruit 
and serpent, an alluring phenomenon which 
attracts the sense, and an invisible tempter 
who holds up before man an illusory image 
of his freedom.” With reverence for the 
Word and with faith in the divine inspiration 


The Fact and Its Origin 


185 


of its authors, let us study the origin of sin. 
“The doctrine of the origin of sin, says 
Bishell, “is one of the essential features of 
Christianity. ’ ’ For convenience we shall con- 
sider the fall under four divisions: the per- 
son under trial, the place, the law, and the 
temptation. 

First, let us consider the individual. The 
narrative states that “God formed man out 
of the dust of the grounds ’ He was not let 
down from heaven, but made to dwell upon 
the earth and be subject to earth’s environ- 
ment and influences. Physically he was simi- 
lar to all men — save the fact that he had not 
been affected by sin or disease. “He was 
the possessor of a good body, healthy, well- 
proportioned in all its members. To suppose 
otherwise would be to impeach its Maker.” 
He was subject to the common fortunes of 
human existence. He was neither a God 
nor an angel, but a human being. 

Intellectually he had richly and amply en- 
dowed faculties, hut when asked with what 
degree of knowledge he was endowed, Foster 
says, “we are inclined to say, None what- 


186 


The Fact of Sin 


ever. Knowledge is an acquirement, not a 
gift.” He had the equipment of a man and 
the favor of the divine agency, but he had no 
mysterious or unnatural gifts. In speaking 
of man’s original condition, Van Oosterzee 
says, “It must have been a state of original 
sinlessness and purity; for God, who by 
man’s conscience forbids him to commit sin, 
could not by any possibility begin by Himself 
originating evil.” He was innocent, but not 
perfect. He was here for discipline. He had 
everything to learn. While he was “subject 
to mistakes and errors, yet on moral sub- 
jects he had an ever-present Guide, whose 
voice was ever audible.” We do not know 
how long he remained in a state of innocency. 
Some claim that this extended for some 
time, at least sufficient time intervened for 
him to have given names to all the animals 
and to have gained some knowledge of his 
surroundings. We may safely assume that, 
in consequence of his close alliance with God 
and the absence of any separation due to sin, 
the communication between heaven and earth 
was complete. 


The Fact and Its Origin 187 

Secondly, we shall consider the place of 
trial. This was not a veritable paradise, 
having special snnshine and peculiar en- 
chantment. It was a “ place long and abun- 
dantly inhabited by living creatures. The 
whole earth, as much as that particular spot, 
was to be their home. ’ ’ There is no evidence 
in Scripture that would lead us to conclude 
that there were not many other places just 
as beautiful as this one which God designated 
as the Garden of Eden, Nature and her 
products were not essentially different from 
what we find now. It was a dwelling-place 
for man, perfect in function, innocent in life, 
and with an environment conducive to the 
maintenance of that state. Thus far there 
has been no sin. Everything was favorable 
to the free moral agent undergoing the divine 
test in that primal school of life. 

In the third place, the command was a 
simple prohibition instituted by the Divine 
Creator. The method used was very simple 
and concrete. There was no possible chance 
for any confusion or misunderstanding. 
God’s desire was simply to test man’s obe- 


188 


The Fact of Sin 


dience. He arranges everything in Adam’s 
favor. Every provision was conducive to 
his highest needs and development. He may 
have lacked the knowledge of sin as the Evil 
One knew it, hut he knew good because he 
knew God. Whatever he needed was attain- 
able through commendable means. Any ex- 
perimental knowledge of evil was unneces- 
sary and abnormal to human growth and at- 
tainment. The probationer is brought face 
to face with law. While the law was a nec- 
essary element, it was not the real center 
of the problem. The objective thing used 
was not causal, hut correlative. The apple 
was “good for food and pleasant to the 
eyes. ’ 9 The association of this with physical 
hunger and aesthetic pleasure was not sinful, 
but natural and innocent. Adam was con- 
scious of the command, and the whole force 
of his nature said, “Obey God.” He was in 
no sense forced by the pangs of hunger or 
the bias of evil. 

We now come to the consideration of the 
tempter . While we hold that the origin of 
sin was in the will of man, yet we find that 


The Fact and Its Origin 


189 


Satan was a factor in the temptation. The 
command is presented in a false and decep- 
tive light. They believed God naturally, hut 
Satan seeks to destroy that belief by stating 
that God is a deceiver and that the eating of 
the fruit will not cause death; that by de- 
ceptive means He is seeking to limit their 
liberty and subject them to bondage; and 
furthermore, that the eating of the fruit will 
open their eyes and they shall become as 
gods, knowing good and evil. We conclude 
from these statements that the adversary re- 
ferred to could not have been a part of their 
subjective nature, as some have thought. 
Such subtle suggestions could not originate 
with innocent persons. The fall can not be 
attributed to freedom, since freedom in it- 
self is neither sin nor sin-suggestive. We 
can not attribute it to self-assertion, when 
that self is the highest expression of God’s 
holiness. Sinful self-assertion can not pre- 
cede sin, since in this instance the lower self 
was not yet existent. ‘ ‘ The cause of the first 
sin can not he sin itself.” The self-assertion 
of a depraved man is evil, but the self-asser- 


190 


The Fact of Sin 


tion of the innocent can not be the genesis 
of sin. 

The will consented to disobedience, but in 
this case did not assert itself, or the act 
would have been obedience. Man partakes 
of the fruit, and the fall is complete. How- 
ever, the doubt and unbelief induced by Satan 
ought not to be made causal to the fall. 4 4 The 
fact that the fall of man was occasioned by 
the temptation of the serpent affords no solu- 
tion as to the difficulty of the disobedience 
or the origin of evil, nor is it presented in 
the Scriptures as doing so. Whatever par- 
tial explanation it may be held to give, only 
removes the mystery a step farther back, 
since in any case there must have been a first 
sin to which there was no tempter. ’ ’ 

Notwithstanding this fact, man’s self- 
perversion was the act of his own will. There 
was no possible plea of “not guilty.” God’s 
dealing with them is not changed in the least 
because of the serpent’s part in the fall. 
Temptation is no excuse for sin with free 
moral agents. Their own action and confes- 
sion condemns them. “Without sin there 
is no shame.” 


The Fact and Its Origin 


191 


The origin of sin, as we have attempted 
to show, has its rise in the hnman will. 
Man’s gnilt is evidenced by his own free- 
dom and by God’s justice and holiness. The 
fact that sin does not come into the world 
from some pre-existent state of life, that it 
is not due to human limitation, that God is 
not its author, that it is not necessitated ; but 
that it finds its genesis in man’s abuse of 
human freedom — prepares the way for the 
solution of all correlative problems which 
confront us in the consideration of the fact 
of sin. 

“Sin is an existing fact,” says Dr. A. H. 
Strong, “but God can not be its author, 
either by creating man’s nature so that sin 
was a necessary incident of its development 
or by withdrawing a supernatural grace 
which was necessary to keep man holy. 
Eeason, therefore, has no other recourse 
than to accept the Scripture doctrine that sin 
originated in man’s free act of revolt from 
God — the act of a will which, though inclined 
toward God, was not yet confirmed in virtue 
and was still capable of a contrary choice.” 





IX 

THE FACT AND ITS NATURE 


13 


“Sin as a state or condition refers, of course, not to 
actions, but to persons ; it is a conception which bids us 
think not of what a man has done, but of what he is. The 
sinful action is the symptom or the outcome of a sinfulness 
which already characterizes the actor; it proceeds from a 
corruption or depravity of nature which may be far more 
serious than any given manifestation of it.” 

— James Denny, 


“Human conduct is not a succession of isolated acts : it 
reveals certain permanent moral qualities which constitute 
character. There are elements of good and evil in the very 
life of man. What he says and what he does discloses what 
he is. He is a bad man — not only because he voluntarily says 
and does many wicked things, but because he himself is 
wicked; his very life is very corrupt. He is a good man not 
only because he voluntarily does many good things, but be- 
cause he himself is good, his very life is just and pure and 
kindly. An habitual liar is a liar not only while he is actually 
telling a lie, but before and afterwards.” — R. W. Dale. 


THE NATURE 


The human will is the lone sentinel of 
the heart. The sentinel has proven false to 
his trust, and sin has gained an entrance 
into the very “holy of holies ,, of the heart. 
And in this life-center its seat has been estab- 
lished. We now have the deadly microbes 
of sin within and the bacilli of evil without. 
Out of the scarlet-stained heart come the vir- 
ulent issues of evil. 

The “New Theology” of these modern 
times has brought a new conception of evil. 
Its fundamental distinction from the “old” 
is found in its treatment of the nature of sin. 
The devotees of this new orthodoxy would 
rob the Church of its power and question the 
integrity of the Infinite. They would make 
the existence of evil a present necessity and 
an inseparable counterpart of good. The 
idea of lawlessness remains, but the guilt of 
the transgressor is lessened. Nature and en- 
195 


196 


The Fact of Sin 


vironment combine to make wrong-doing in- 
evitable. Evil is justified by saying that 
i ‘ man can only reach what he ought to be by 
passing through what he ought not to be.” 
Man excuses himself and accuses God. But 
this prevalent notion of outward evil fails to 
distinctly express its real nature. 

The superficial conclusion that growth 
and development in both the individual and 
society can only come through a constant 
struggle against evil antagonisms cheapens 
human character, disgraces divine wisdom, 
and makes sin an eternal necessity. This 
may appear to be an easy solution of the 
problem of evil, but its whole underlying 
principle is false to the divine principles of 
Christ’s coming kingdom. We are conscious 
of the prevalence of this false conception 
both among philosophers and a certain class 
of modern theologians, but this fact ought 
not to excuse its perversions. It is also the 
popular notion of all devotees of the so-called 
life of necessitated struggle. We forget that 
there may be normal antagonisms as well as 
abnormal, and that there may be healthy 


The Fact and Its Nature 197 

growth due to positive aggressiveness as well 
as to negative self-defense. 

Sin is not an aid, but a hindrance to 
character culture, except as in certain cases 
when divine sovereignty overrules it for 
good. “Evil can not be regarded ,’ ’ says 
Martensen, “as an immanent feature of the 
idea of the world ; hut must, on the contrary, 
be treated as an interruption of the course 
of its immanent development. Its influence 
is to hinder and disturb all true development. 
Evil is not involved in the conception of in- 
dividuality; but is rooted in the perversion 
of the conception of individuality. Those 
who entertain the opinion that the good 
would lack vigor and reality unless accom- 
panied by evil, must have but a faint concep- 
tion of the inner power of the good and the 
fullness of positive forces which it contains 
within itself.” 

This is a materialistic age, and the ten- 
dency is to locate sin in the physical nature. 
The very nature of the theory denies its va- 
lidity. The unconscious and impersonal can 
not determine the nature of sin. A misinter- 


198 


The Fact of Sin 


pretation of the use of the word “sarx” in 
the Pauline Epistles accounts for the theory. 
Orello Cone, of Berlin, in a review of the 
Pauline doctrine of sin, attempts to prove 
that sin has its seat in the “ flesh’ ’ and is 
“revived” through the agency of the law. 
The objective sin becomes subjective, the 
“material” sin becomes “formal.” He 
claims that Paul never used the verb “to 
sin” (hamartano) except as meaning indi- 
vidual transgression. 

He naturally concludes that one at least 
of the apostle’s doctrines of the nature of sin 
was that it resided primarily in the nature 
of the individual and “in the first man 
Adam” as well as his descendants. The first 
man was of the earth, earthy — that is, the 
opposite of spiritual — therefore sinful. 4 6 Sin 
inheres in the flesh of the physical or natural 
man, and it is grounded in his original con- 
stitution. Man, being of flesh and ‘ ‘ earthy, ’ ’ 
is naturally mortal, and his mortality is by 
reason of the divine judgment upon sin. 

Thayer says ‘ ‘ sarx ’ ’ has an ethical mean- 
ing and denotes the earthy nature of man 


The Fact and Its Nature 


199 


apart from divine influence, and therefore 
prone to sin and opposed to God ; accordingly 
it includes whatever in the sonl is weak, low, 
debased, tending to ungodliness, and vice. 
“ Flesh signifies the entire nature of man, 
sense, and reason, without the Holy Spirit .’ 9 
“Evil,” says Muller (Vol. I, p. 26), “is the 
existence of a disturbing, disuniting element 
in a sphere where the demand for harmony 
and unity makes itself most singularly em- 
phatic. Were it possible, as Fichte and No- 
valis declare, to shake oft ‘the old grievous 
delusion of sin,’ as an empty dream, by a 
resolute determination, who would not in so 
convenient a manner be released! But as 
the well-known cunning of the ostrich does 
not save it from the shot of the huntsman, 
neither will the shutting of our eyes to the 
existence of evil cause it to vanish, but only 
the more certainly deliver us into its power.” 
With the sincere seeker after truth, to know 
sin is the antecedent step toward remedy, 
and to know righteousness is to possess it. 

Sin is not a disease of the body, although 
it is closely associated with many phases of 


The Fact of sin 


200 

physical evil and human misery. It is not a 
species of bacilli in the blood. If that were 
true we had better turn our churches into 
hospitals and have our preachers become 
physicians. Evil is related to health and 
bodily life, but the relation is causal rather 
than qualitative. Sin leads to physical dis- 
ease and death as well as spiritual, but the 
agent is not to be found in that which it acts 
upon. Sin is a spiritual disease and requires 
a spiritual remedy. To locate evil in matter 
would require a physical atonement and ren- 
der the sufferings of the God-man a mere 
absurdity. “Evil is not only at variance 
with the good,” says one, “but also with it- 
self; if the good has only one enemy, the 
evil has two, the good and the evil.” 

The Greek philosophers located evil in 
the intellectual nature of man. Error was 
the sole source of sin, and men do wrong 
because they are ignorant of the truth. Edu- 
cate the people and evil will disappear, is 
their dictum, but knowledge is a poor index 
to character. In Christ’s estimate of char- 
acter, the culture of the Pharisee was as 


The Fact and Its Nature 


201 


valueless as the rags of the Publican. We 
would not undervalue education, it is a uni- 
versal necessity, but we would search deeper 
and find sin in the heart life. Character and 
culture can produce those who account them- 
selves debtors to all men, but culture alone 
can only develop irresponsible, self-centered 
individualists. 

A third man locates sin in our environ- 
ment. His panacea for evil would be to 
change the sinner ’s location, improve his sur- 
roundings, build him a better home, and fur- 
nish him with better clothing and properly 
prepared food. Grant that all these are de- 
sirable and necessary, and we still have 
failed to change the man. The philanthro- 
pist who would do constructive work must 
come to the realization that it is the sinful 
man who makes the bad environment, and not 
the bad environment that always makes the 
sinner. The successful remedy must be in- 
ternal rather than external. Selfishness is 
the primal seat of sin. As Muller has said 
(Vol. I, p. 135), “if a man loves things in- 
stead of God, he only loves himself in them, 


202 


The Fact of Sin 


only seeks in them his own gratification. ’ 9 
The radical tendency of sinful inclinations 
and lust for impersonal existence does not 
hold good if our object he to discover the 
real nature of sin. Pride is the most naked 
form of selfishness, and though its initial step 
is hatred, it may be found in virtue as well 
as vice. ” Dr. Denney, in a reference as to 
the nature of sin, says “that when a man 
sins he does something in which his whole 
being participates, and the conscious reaction 
is that of the whole system of things in arms 
against him. ’ ’ The murders, thefts, the bru- 
talities, the wrecked homes and ruined lives : 
these are only the incidental expressions of 
sin. If the fruit is bad, the tree is still worse. 
The outward act may be a crime against so- 
ciety, but the sin-state of the actor’s heart 
is a crime against God. We are told that 
the wages of sin is death, but the greater 
part of the wages is not received here. The 
deepest meaning of sin comes to us in that 
unknown word “death.” 

From a study of Demonology we are en- 
abled to more fully understand the nature 


The Fact and Its Nature 203 

of sin. Satan, as we may infer from Scrip- 
ture, is a fallen angel. The very nature of 
the environment of angels makes sin with 
them a much greater crime than among 
earthly creatures. The higher the being, the 
greater the curse of evil. Probation for an- 
gels and for the redeemed is an irrational in- 
vention of man. If a human being sin while 
in this life, it is right that he should have a 
probation and an opportunity to repent; but 
if an angel rebel against God, let it be a sin 
unto death which merits eternal judgment. 

“ Since Satan is a purely spiritual being, 
sin can not have its seat in the sensuous na- 
ture or in the mere possession of a physical 
nature.” Those who hold that sin has its 
seat in the physical and intellectual nature 
of man must deny that it is possible for 
Satan to be sinful. We would then be forced 
to conclude that in the future life, having 
lost our physical nature, the good and bad 
will alike be sinless. Sin reaches far deeper 
than the “sarx” — even to the soul of man. 

Shall we consider Satan a weak, poorly 
endowed creature? Not if we gain our in- 


204 


The Fact of Sin 


formation from the Scriptures. Paul was 
not given to exaggeration in portraying his 
enemies. Bnt he thought it essential for the 
Christian warrior to have on the whole 
armor of God, if he would be successful in 
contending against the wiles of the devil. 
Not a battle against flesh and blood, but 
against powers and spirits of wickedness in 
heavenly places. Our enemy is possessed of 
wily wisdom and demoniac power. Evil finds 
its abode not in the infirmity of the flesh or 
the intellect, hut in the citadel of the heart. 
It is this that gives it its reigning principle 
and enslaving power. Christ came to destroy 
the works of Satan — these are spiritual. Our 
vision of sin may he gained from the mani- 
fold manifestations in the sensuous nature, 
but its seat is in the very center of the spirit 
life. 

We fail to understand evil because our 
sight is confined to the outward appearances, 
but “God looketh on the heart.” Dr. Mar- 
tensen remarks that, “if evil be taken as im- 
personal, its sting is taken away and it sinks 
into a mere power of nature, still it can not 


The Fact and Its Nature 


205 


be personal in exactly the same sense as 
God is personal. It is man, therefore, who 
gives the devil being; but it by no means 
follows from this that man is only his own 
devil. It is another, a superhuman principle, 
to which existence is imparted by man, a 
tempting, seducing, making-possessed, and 
inspiring power, to which man lends himself 
as to a non ego. The devil is a spirit that 
man has voluntarily conjured to himself, and 
is not able to cast out. He requires the help 
of Him who is the Master and God of the 
spirit-world. No personal reality is attrib- 
uted to the devil beyond or apart from the 
world of man. A negative principle has no 
personality in itself, but can only obtain per- 
sonality in living creatures.” We have here 
the presentation of a great theologian’s in- 
terpretation of the Biblical doctrine of Satan, 
and an attempted explanation of his person- 
ality, which in no way denies the reality of 
the fact, but seeks to satisfy the philosophic 
spirit of the student by a new view of per- 
sonality. 






t 


X 

THE FACT AND ITS CHARACTER- 
ISTICS 


“Sin first of all reveals itself in its real character, when 
the requirement of holiness in the conscience reveals itself 
to man as a requirement of loving resignation to God, and is 
rejected by him with aversion. Here sin first of all becomes 
directly seen what it really is, namely, a turning away from 
God ; and as an augmented degree of personal guilt is 
attached to this turning point, there is also connected with 
the same a benumbing of the heart, in which those higher 
emotions and impulses perish.” 

— “ Christian Doctrine of Sin,” Julius Muller. 


“ What is sin ? It is the conscious choice of evil instead 
of good; it is the refusal on the part of a moral agent to 
choose what he believes to be right. There was never a 
better definition of sin than that of the Apostle James: 
‘ Therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, 
to him it is sin.’ Nothing is sin which is not the result of 
the conscious choice on the part of one who is free to choose 
differently. That is not sin which necessarily follows 
ignorance or compulsion. Sin is willful transgression of the 
law ; or as it is expressed in the Revised Version, it is law- 
lessness ; that is, the living in a world of law and order as if 
there were neither.” 

— “ The Age of Faith,” Amory H. Bradford. 


THE CHARACTERISTICS 


Sin in its amenability to the absolute 
must include certain essential characteristics 
or attributes. The analysis here given is 
based on the Christian conception of sin in its 
relations to divine government. 

The first of these elements is Personality. 
Life may be destroyed and suffering may re- 
sult from purely physical or natural laws. 
Physical evil may come through impersonal 
action. But moral evil presupposes person- 
ality. It is the unique product of man. 
4 ‘ Sin, ’ ’ says Foster, ‘ ‘ is something which the 
individual man does: it is an act. There is 
no sin where there is not a sinner ; and there 
is no sinner where there is not an act commit- 
ted by him which constitutes him a sinner.” 
The agent must first be a person before he 
can be guilty of any transgression of the 
moral law. Instinct and spontaneous im- 
pulse are the non-moral features of “neces- 
14 209 


210 


The Fact of Sin 


sity.” “It is the man himself, the person, 
the self, the ‘ego’ — the man, whatever you 
please to term him — that we hold responsible, 
and praise or blame.” 

The true person has self-consciousness. 
He can objectify self, weigh acts, consider 
motives, estimate responsibility, and practice 
freedom in moral action. The animal may 
have a sense of fear, but no idea of guilt. 
The dog may know his master, but he can not 
know self. He is never conscious of moral 
duty and, therefore, never sins. The highest 
animals all lack that mysterious power that 
makes man a personality. As Browning 
wisely states it, “The beasts are , they can 
never be more,” but “man partly is and 
wholly hopes to be. ” He is a conscious per- 
sonality and has power to know himself and 
his sin and to advance beyond what he has 
been or knows himself now to be. 

The second element in moral accounta- 
bility is Rationality. The person must be 
capable of intelligent choice before he can 
be held amenable to the moral law. Infants 
and idiots are excluded from the realm of 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 211 

rational choice. There must be a possibility 
of reflection and judgment, or “ suspension 
of choice ’ ’ becomes an absurdity. 6 1 Animals 
have motive impulses and volitional power; 
but they can not choose the ends of their vo- 
litions, because lacking the faculties of ra- 
tional apprehension . 9 9 

The self-consciousness of every man intu- 
itively affirms rationality to be a necessary 
element in responsible action. When man 
loses bis reason be becomes less than a per- 
son. Dr. Hodge claims that 4 ‘any volition 
which does not follow the best dictates of the 
understanding, in this sense of the word is 
an act of an idiot. It may be spontaneous 
just as acts of brutes are, but it can not be 
free in the sense of being the act of an ac- 
countable person.” But is not all sin irra- 
tional from the Christian point of view? A 
man may do foolish things and yet not be 
a fool. The fact that be does the wrong when 
be might have done the right, does not neces- 
sarily predicate irrationality, but only evi- 
dences bis freedom and power of self-asser- 
tion. 


212 


The Fact of Sin 


Human sovereignty is a part of person- 
ality. The free agent is not limited to the 
choice of the good. He may fully realize that 
the course he is about to pursue is not the 
most rational, nor likely to result in highest 
good ; but he wills it regardless of these con- 
siderations. It is in the willful irrationality 
of the act that sin gains its exceeding sinful- 
ness. Back of all motives, all standards of 
ethics, and all arguments for rationality in 
action — man’s will controls volition. I do 
not know that we shall ever improve Muller’s 
definition of sin as being 4 ‘ a conscious turning 
away from the love of God to self-seeking.” 
Augustine held the essence of sin to be pride, 
while Calvin regarded it as unbelief. In all 
these instances, however, there is the element 
of freedom. 

The question of the freedom of the will is 
central and fundamental to the correct inter- 
pretation of Christian doctrine. To deny 
freedom and assume necessity is fatal to 
God’s total dealing with man, and defeats 
His purpose and plan in respect to the cre- 
ation of the race. The power of “ contrary 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 213 

choice” is absolutely indispensable to any 
system of moral government. All who admit 
that we are responsible moral beings are 
compelled to grant the inseparable element 
of free choice. 

The whole discussion takes the form of an 
explanation. Man has an active as well as 
a passive existence. Consciousness testifies 
to our ability to choose. Calvinists would 
deny the testimony of consciousness by refer- 
ring it to a non-existent choice which has not 
yet taken place, rather than properly apply- 
ing it to the existing “ power” which is able 
to make the contrary choice possible. 

God willed man to be free, but not to sin. 
It was humanity’s only road to moral excel- 
lence. The whole question of human charac- 
ter which lifts man above the animal world 
is dependent on human sovereignty. Man 
must be free or cease to be moral. Sin must 
be a “possibility” or freedom is an unreality. 
In the physical realm we are content to be 
acted upon, but in the moral sphere we hold 
that our will is supreme. Tennyson says, 
“Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.” 


214 


The Fact of Sin 


That is correct when speaking nnder moral 
restraint and is in perfect harmony with 
Christian duty. Bnt whether onr wills are 
ours or not in the proper sense of ownership, 
we are not compelled to make them His. 
When we surrender them to God and say, 
“No longer my will be done, but Thine/ ’ it 
is by the voluntary consent of our will, and 
not by any inward or outward necessity. 

We may view the problem through a 
study of our own consciousness and experi- 
ence, in so far as they find support in di- 
vine revelation. If we deny a man this testi- 
mony we immediately impeach the very fac- 
ulties by which he seeks to express himself. 
We all recognize that we are the possessors 
of two natures — more or less in opposition 
to each other. Paul designates the one as 
“spiritual” and the other as “carnal.” We 
may call them the inherent good and evil. 
Are we under bondage to either of these? 
Which is master — the will or these inner ten- 
dencies? That we follow the divine element 
in us seems at first to be necessary to perfec- 
tion in Christ and also to insure the success 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 215 

of the divine plan. That we follow the evil 
in ns is necessary to explain man in his pres- 
ent condition of sin and vice. Bnt if we ad- 
mit the sinlessness and parity of our first 
parents, then we are compelled to say that 
Adam was an exception. Matter can not be 
evil and primitive man sinless : having 
granted these two facts, man’s will must 
be free to explain the present existence of 
sin. Those who claim that man is really free 
only in the realm of the good, are at a loss to 
explain change in character. 

A log in the river is free to float down 
stream, hut not free from floating down ; nor 
is it free to go up stream. Men are not logs 
thrown into different streams — some good 
and some evil. Freedom to float with the cur- 
rent — whether that be good or bad — when at 
the same time we have no alternate choice, is 
not freedom. It is the will that determines 
character, not character that determines the 
will. Virtue and vice influence, but do not 
control, action. Sin may be defined here as 
the self-asserted action of the human will in 
opposition to divine authority. 


216 


The Fact of Sin 


“We regard the will as the seat of virtue 
and vice. The morality in the will begins at 
the place where conscience interposes. . . . 
In short, human virtue consists in the will.” 
The use of the word “seat” in this passage 
is rather at fault. The will is the determin- 
ing power which controls action, that shapes 
the issues of life which flow from the heart, 
that decides what shall find entrance to the 
heart; but the real seat of virtue and sin 
is back of the will. Christ always sought en- 
trance through the will, but the work He 
wrought was analogous to Davids need, ex- 
pressed in his prayer for the creation of a 
new heart and the renewing of a right spirit 
within. If “human virtue and vice consist 
in the will,” then action is necessitated. We 
must place the will above and in control of 
these virtues and vices, if we are to explain 
man’s action. 

The Calvinists, with whom we have 
chiefly to deal in this question of freedom, 
have attempted to harmonize their doctrine 
of decrees and foreordination with the idea 
of free volition. They say man is outwardly 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 217 

free, but yet hold to inner necessity. This 
divine inner necessity controls outward ac- 
tions, and as a result outward freedom can 
exist only in theory. They would oppose 
common judgment and consciousness, and ex- 
cuse themselves by a reference to the law of 
causality. However, the main difficulty is in 
the interpretation of terms used. Absolute 
freedom is quite a different thing from rela- 
tive freedom. We believe that the righteous 
man is under a different motive power from 
the unrighteous person, and that he is more 
apt to do good than evil. One man has a 
momentum toward the good and another a 
bias toward evil, but both are free. 

Findlay, in discussing the Holy Spirit, 
quotes from Paul, “ Where the Spirit of the 
Lord is, there is liberty.” He refers to the 
“spirit of liberty” and the “spirit of bond- 
age.” The coexistence of divine sovereignty 
and human liberty is spoken of as a paradox. 
Our independence is relative and environed 
by the divine will. “We are bound by our 
own past and the past of our race. We are 
shut in and held down by habit and circum- 


218 


The Fact of Sin 


stance, so that onr choice is limited practi- 
cally to a choice of moral evil.” The Holy 
Spirit comes in and sets ns free. Liberty is 
of the sons of God; that is, those who are 
living in harmony with God’s will. This 
wonld be true if motives controlled volition. 

The Apostle Panl did not mean to infer 
necessitated action to all who were not in 
harmony with the divine will. This bondage 
to the flesh affected the motive range and 
rendered good action more difficult, but pure 
freedom of volition is not annulled by sin. 
The captain of a vessel is just as free to turn 
his vessel up stream as down, so far as he 
is concerned. It causes more effort on the 
part of the men below. The adverse wind 
and strong tide may defeat the carrying out 
of his volition. The paths of good and evil 
are both open to man; but while the way of 
the transgressor is hard, the path of the just 
is as a shining light, that shineth more and 
more unto the perfect day. 

Man is free to choose in that no foreign 
will can irresistibly cause him to will against 
his own will. He is not free in so far as the 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 219 

sin which has been allowed by himself crowds 
ont the good and inclines him toward the bad. 
Freedom of the will is not dependent on 
physical ability in the moral realm. If sin 
is complete in the volition without the out- 
ward act, then virtue is complete, even 
though a man fail in putting his desire into 
action. The habitual drunkard may reach a 
state of bondage in which his appetite con- 
trols his action. He wills to stop drinking. 
His volition represents him totally, but he 
has lost the ability necessary to put this 
choice into action. Two men who are equally 
able to swim are on a sinking boat. Both de- 
sire to he saved, and both will to reach the 
shore. The one is successful in the execution 
of his volition. The other fastens his bags 
of gold about him and he fails. Can we say 
that either was in bondage so far as the will 
was concerned? The failure was due to self- 
imposed limitation upon physical strength. 

The total teaching of Scripture shows 
that God always deals with men as free 
moral agents. He places before them life 
and happiness, and they choose misery and 


220 


The Fact of Sin 


death. He offers them the good, and they re- 
bel against Him and seek the evil. In the 
New Testament the law is the same, except 
that the coming of Christ widened the field 
of good motives and increased their value; 
yet the balance still stands before each man 
and he has power to turn it either way. The 
weight of his personality outweighs the over- 
balance on either side. 

Man was originally free in that he did 
not have a depraved nature, but the tendency 
toward sin is counterbalanced by the “im- 
mediate” benefits of the atonement. When 
a man comes to the age of accountability with 
an added bias in favor of evil, Christ meets 
him with an equal power for good which 
places him before the law practically as 
though he was free from the sin-tendency. 

Christ spoke to men with a clear under- 
standing of their freedom. Non-acceptance 
of his salvation was always attributed to the 
unwillingness of the subject, and never to in- 
ability or necessity. “Wiliest thou to be 
made whole” — always preceded the work of 
the Divine Physician. He who was the incar- 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 221 

nation of Omnipotence and Omniscience 
stands without, asking entrance of the human 
will. He knocks at the door. He seeks to 
enter; but the agent decides the opening of 
the door. The latch is on the inside. But 
some one says that would defeat the plan of 
redemption. Not at all. Because I am free 
does not in the least prevent me from choos- 
ing the good and rejecting the had. 

God in His wisdom has so constituted hu- 
manity that every ruined life is a danger sig- 
nal warning men to depart from the evil way, 
while every good life is a guiding light to 
keep them in the right path. The “new 
race” developed under freedom is going to 
include more than half of humanity. Finite 
reason may at times be troubled about the 
plans of the Infinite and be tempted to think 
it better to have had the human will wholly 
under control of the divine will ; but our keen 
sense of responsibility is certain to testify 
that such judgment is erroneous. 

The denial of human freedom makes sal- 
vation an arbitrary act of God, demands a 
limited atonement, makes void human respon- 


222 


The Fact of Sin 


sibility for sin, annuls character which has 
its source in freedom, and drives men to the 
logical conclusion which would end in univer- 
salism. Man differs from the corrupt tree 
in that he has the power to will a change in 
his character through divine aid, and thus 
cause it to produce good fruit instead of evil. 
He is not a creature of presented motives, 
but the result of chosen motives. Man’s will 
is the determining power in final choice. We 
may present our arguments, our moral im- 
petus, our prayers and pleadings, and the 
Holy Spirit’s power may also be applied to 
man’s rebellious nature; but all this can not 
necessitate choice. Divinely granted human 
sovereignty is capable of standing out in 
opposition to all these. Man is free, and 
therefore responsible. He is responsible, 
and therefore amenable to the moral law and 
guilty of sin committed. The vitality of 
Christianity can be maintained only through 
freedom of the will. And this freedom of 
the will is necessary to any rational solution 
of the problem of evil. 

A knowledge of the law is another ele- 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 223 

ment in onr analysis of the responsible agent. 
In the courts of the State a knowledge of 
the law is taken for granted as an essential 
qualification of citizenship, and ignorance of 
the law is no excuse for disobedience. The 
moral government of God differs from this, 
in that the basis of estimating guilt is depend- 
ent on the transgressor’s knowledge of the 
law or his ability and opportunity to have 
known it. There ’s a wideness in God’s 
mercy and a justice in His judgment which is 
foreign to man. We must know His will be- 
fore we can live it. However, we find that 
the law is not only made known to man in 
revelation, but there is an inner law written 
on the heart. Paul speaks of the “Gentiles 
who have not the law outwardly written, but 
who show a work of the law written in their 
hearts and consciences. ’ ’ Sin is not imputed 
(reckoned) where there is no knowledge of 
law. “The person can not sin if the law 
which he transgresses be unknown to him in 
such a degree that he is unconscious of wrong 
in the act committed, or in the determination 
of himself thereto.” 


224 


The Fact of Sin 


As Shakespeare says , 4 4 The wish is father 
to the thought.” Sin is knowledge opposed, 
not ignorance followed. Unknown law is 
akin to absence of law. The last command 
of our Lord was, “Go ye into all the world 
and teach all nations.” Give them the law, 
and then command them to observe it. Pos- 
sibly knowledge in morals becomes a measure 
of man’s accountability to God. We are not 
to condemn men who know not the law, but 
to “him who knoweth to do good and doeth 
it not, to Mm it is sin.” 

The last characteristic of sin is that it 
is a voluntary transgression of some moral 
law. The moral element in the act is com- 
plete as soon as the volition is made. The 
external action is only an expression of the 
internal state of the heart. The intent and 
motive of the free moral agent must be taken 
into consideration as giving quality to the 
action. The act may be natural, and yet im- 
moral, but if it he necessitated it becomes un- 
moral. Sin must arise from intentional per- 
sonal volition, and the act must he commit- 
ted within the sphere of moral law. “Sin is 


The Fact and Its Characteristics 225 

not an entity or substance of any kind, ma- 
terial or immaterial, which is conveyed from 
one being to another, by generation or in 
any other way.” We must therefore distin- 
guish it from substance, effect or potency, 
produced by natural forces or transmitted 
by physical generation. 

In our analysis of the attributes of sin 
we have the following fundamental elements 
as peculiar to the person whom Christianity 
would justly designate as a sinner. 

Sin can be predicated only of personal be- 
ings. 

The person must be rational. 

The rational person must also have the 
power of “contrary choice,” or freedom of 
the will. 

There must also be a known law which the 
sinner is conscious of having transgressed. 

The act must be intentional and volun- 
tary. 


15 


XI 

THE FACT AND ITS TRANS- 
MISSION 


“ With evil once begun, the race is a succession of 
tainted individuals, — an organism that works toward con- 
tinuance of evil. Not but good is transmitted at the same 
time, for it goes along with the evil. Any virtue or value 
that is strong enough to live will pass from generation to 
generation, even while evil is making the same journey; 
and thus have been perpetuated those fundamental qualities 
that make society possible and life worth living from day to 
day in spite of all the evil." 

— “An Outline of Christian Theology," W. N. Clarke. 


“ Under the law of heredity the definite moral evils which 
are constitutionally present in parents are transmitted — we 
can not tell how — to children and to children’s children. I 
am not sure that the word transmitted accurately represents 
the facts; it may, I can not tell. We are perhaps on surer 
grounds when we say that the definitely moral evils which 
are constitutionally present in the parents, reappear in the 
children. Families have their characteristic vices and their 
characteristic virtues. Sometimes a generation escapes the 
taint, and it reappears in the next." — R. W. Dale. 


THE TRANSMISSION 


The question of the transmission of sin 
presents a vast field for investigation and 
room for all manner of speculation. The 
laws of heredity as well as those which have 
to do with the spread of crime and the devel- 
opment of virtue are before the student of 
this problem. We may study the individual 
as well as society, and discover transmitted 
influence in almost every sphere of human 
life. But as introductory to this discussion 
we must state that transmitted depravity is 
not transmitted sin, nor does hereditary ten- 
dency carry with it hereditary guilt. 

The realistic theory of Adamic sin has its 
main defense in the theology of Dr. Shedd. 
He treats individuals not as separate person- 
alities in themselves, but as modes and mani- 
festations of the generic nature. While our 
presence in Adam was impersonal, it was 
real and substantial. “Adam was the ge- 
229 


230 


The Fact of Sin 


neric man, and owing to the fact that the es- 
sential being of the whole race was in him, all 
men had a common participation in the prim- 
itive sin.” This reduces individuals to mere 
modes of one substance. The race is held re- 
sponsible because this generic nature was 
rational and in Adam. Adam sinned, and 
therefore all men sinned, because they were 
mysteriously present in him. We reply to 
this — that sin is personal, and in no sense 
can it be generic. 

The representative theory makes Adam 
the head of the race in a very unique sense. 
His sin was not the act of an individual, but 
an act which represented all men. This fed- 
eral headship constituted a moral and legal 
oneness of the race, so that his fall meant 
the fall of the entire race. But Adam could 
not represent us in his personal act, for the 
reason that we were in no moral sense repre- 
sented. We might designate such an act as 
‘ ‘ implication without representation.” 

Setting aside the foregoing theories and 
also the unjust notion of divine imputation, 
we find in the law of genetic transmission 


The Fact and Its Transmission 231 

a clear account of the depravity of man. 
This is a uniform law of nature and is in 
perfect accord with Scripture teaching. 
Every species of organic life reproduces its 
own kind. The Old Testament holds to ‘ ‘ like 
producing like.” “Who can bring a clean 
thing out of an unclean? Not one.” Men 
are conceived in sin and horn depraved. 
While all sin is personal, depravity is in- 
herited. Adam was not the “federal,” but 
the parental head of the race of which we all 
are members. His position in respect to the 
race was very similar to that of a father in 
relation to his family. In the physical life 
of man, the strong constitution of the parent 
is readily detected in the development of the 
child. 

We find in the intellectual life that the 
change is very slight. The highly educated 
man does not transmit his wisdom to his 
children, but there does come a latent ca- 
pacity which is capable of being developed, 
and which gives the son of the educated man 
an advantage over the son of his uneducated 
brother. The capacity is inherited, but not 


232 


The Fact of Sin 


the knowledge. The moral nature furnishes 
a peculiar expression of this law. We in- 
herit the good results of acquired virtues 
and the had effects of evil habits. This never 
remains exactly the same in any two gener- 
ations, being partly under our control. It 
may miss one generation and reappear in the 
next. The Lord referred to this when He 
said, “I will visit the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children unto the third and fourth 
generations . 9 ’ This is not sin, but a capacity 
for sin. 

But the universal depravity which comes 
from Adam is mysteriously unlike the pre- 
ceding inheritance. It is unvarying in its 
amount. This is an evidence of God’s jus- 
tice. The sons of Adam had to bear no more 
nor less than the average son born to-day. 
Were this not the fact, in course of time a 
long lineage of saints might grow into per- 
fection through the genetic law of transmis- 
sion. The tendency to sin varies greatly in 
different persons, but this may be accounted 
for by the varying heritage of good and evil. 
Unlike the acquired tendencies, it never 


The Fact and Its Transmission 233 

misses a generation. By this theory we 
would not interfere with the beneficial results 
of righteous living, nor the enslaving effect 
of a life spent in sin. The one enlarges the 
range of the motive-state of the good and 
renders it easier for a man to do right, while 
the other enlarges the sphere of the bad 
motives and makes it more difficult to choose 
the good. 

The children of sanctified persons inherit 
depravity, and they themselves have to battle 
with temptation. But as in the case of the 
child, this depravity is not sin and in no 
way interferes with the believer ’s acceptance. 
Depravity will continue to exist, whether 
men profess sanctification or remain in sin. 
The genetic law of transmission will never 
cease to render man depraved until the race 
connection be completely severed; and the 
atonement, which was for all men, will never 
become of none effect. “The whole race,” 
says R. W. Dale, “shares in sin, and yet 
they have the opportunity of sharing in its 
redemption. 

“Christ is the propitiation for the sin of 


234 


The Fact of Sin 


the world. There is an evil power in the 
life of the race — a great and awfnl power — 
which, if unresisted, will destroy ns ; bnt the 
grace of God in Christ is infinitely mightier 
to redeem and to save. We are horn to that 
redemption, to that salvation; it lies with 
each one of ns to determine whether we will 
receive or reject it. If we are finally lost 
it will not be because we belong to a sinfnl 
race, bnt because we have rejected the infinite 
mercy of God which has achieved the re- 
demption of the race in Christ.” 

The extent of the transmission of sin, as 
we shall attempt to show, is universal. In 
apostolic days Paul and Silas were accused 
by the unbelieving Jews of “ turning the 
world upside down. ” But “upside down,” 
in the language and thought of the world, is 
‘ ‘ right side up ’ ’ to the Christian. The twelve 
different words used in Scripture to denomi- 
nate sin lead us to believe that for some rea- 
son there is failure on man’s part in attempt- 
ing to reach some goal or designated mark. 
The genetic law of transmission, when we 
consider it in connection with our idea of the 


The Fact and Its Transmission 235 

solidarity of the race, renders it impossible 
for any member of the race to escape the 
natural inheritance of a depraved nature. 
While this is not sin in itself, yet it almost 
universally becomes actualized in human ex- 
perience. 

The denial of the race connection and the 
hereditary transmission of the Adamic na- 
ture would interfere seriously with the proof 
of the universality of sin. Some claim that 
all men sin, as a natural result of their finite- 
ness, and that, if any other member of the 
race had been in Adam’s place, the result 
would have been the same. The foregoing 
statement is a mere assumption and without 
any valid proof. The most that we could say 
would be that a part might have acted simi- 
larly, but not all. The moment we say all are 
certain to do acts of disobedience we must 
admit some universal cause for their action, 
and thus we would set a seal upon the law 
of sin in humanity. 

The fact of freedom is held by others to 
he a sufficient proof of the universality of sin. 
We admit that it may account for many 


236 


The Fact of Sin 


cases, but not for all. Universal results re- 
quire universal causes. This is illustrated 
by the common experience of every-day life. 
Suppose that on a certain street we notice 
all the people rushing one way, we immedi- 
ately seek some cause for this action. But 
if the crowd had been about equally divided 
and traveling in different directions, we 
would have given it no special attention. 
Every phenomenon of nature that acts with- 
out uniformity must be governed by some 
law. The universal cause which is to account 
for the sinful tendency of all human beings 
can find a logical source only in the fall of 
man. 

If we interpret the passage “in Adam 
all die” as including physical death, then we 
have a second universal cause in support of 
that of inherited depravity. That all men 
experience physical death is undeniable. If 
this result of the fall is without exception, 
then we naturally infer that the others men- 
tioned in connection with this follow the 
same law. But as this interpretation is open 
to dispute, it is not a valid proof in our 
argument. 


The Fact and Its Transmission 237 

We find evidence in the fact that there 
is a universal consciousness of failure among 
all classes of men. In proof of this we may 
follow the argument of Dr. Curtis and refer 
to the best men, and find that the most saintly 
are quite free to admit imperfections and 
failures. Evil may have its degrees, but sin 
is universal. “ Every one who examines at- 
tentively the dictates of conscience and the 
principle to which these may be reduced, and 
who in any way realizes what man’s char- 
acter ought to be, must feel that the doctrine 
of the universality of sin among men is vi- 
tally true. We also realize that despite the 
varied explanations and assumptions the 
fact is inexplicable that, in so far as we 
know, every member of the human race has 
come short of the moral standard which con- 
science compels us to acknowledge as the 
rule of ethical judgment.’ * 

We turn to the Scriptures, and while 
there is no theory set forth, yet everywhere 
there is expressed the fact of universal sin. 
Whether it be in the Old or the New Testa- 
ment, the same great truth is present which 


238 


The Fact of Sin 


in time finds expression in a universal atone- 
ment for sin. ‘ ‘ All we, like sheep, have gone 
astray / ’ “ There is none that doeth good; 

no, not one. ’ 9 “ They are all gone out of the 
way, they are together become unprofitable; 
there is none righteous, no, not one. ’ ’ Aside 
from the abundant proof of the universality 
of sin found in the Scripture, we have the 
evidence suggested by the following state- 
ments : 

The universal testimony of consciousness 
as to moral failure. 

The fall of man as seen in its relation to 
the solidarity of the race. 

The law of genetic transmission, which at 
present is so universally accepted. 

The fact that no exception has yet been 
found. 

Depravity is universal as to the race, but 
it is not total as to the individual. In the 
discussion of this question some still hold 
that man is totally depraved and incapaci- 
tated for any good act. That the fall has so 
affected man that he is unable to save him- 


The Fact and Its Transmission 239 

self, is a well-authenticated fact. But we 
may still affirm that it is possible for man to 
live free from the vicious and criminal acts 
of more degraded classes. However, it is 
fair to state that very much of the good we 
observe in non-Christian men is a result of 
the immediate and unconditional benefits of 
Christ’s atonement, which come freely to 
every member of the race. “Man is, there- 
fore, by grace, but not by his fallen nature, 
as one theologian expresses it, a moral be- 
ing, capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and 
enjoying God ; but when the hour comes that 
his destiny is fixed, when he has been aban- 
doned of God, when the spirit has taken its 
final departure, then, and not till then, is 
man in a condition that can properly be called 
a condition of total depravity . 9 9 

While all men are sinners, all are not 
alike in the nature and degree of their sin. 
We would not dare say that men are totally 
depraved and abandoned of God. The West- 
minster Confession claims that “we are ut- 
terly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite 
to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil. ,, 


240 


The Fact of Sin 


The Free Church of Scotland, in 1892, quali- 
fied its adhesion to the above confession by 
saying ‘ ‘ that in holding and teaching, accord- 
ing to the Confession of Faith, the corruption 
of man’s whole nature as fallen, the Church 
also maintains that there remain tokens of 
his greatness as created in the image of God 
and of duty; that he is responsible for com- 
pliance with the moral law and the gospel, 
and that, although unable without the aid 
of the Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet 
capable of affections and actions which in 
themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy.” 
In the Articles of Religion of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church we find this statement: 
“Man is far gone from original righteous- 
ness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, 
and that continually.” This is undogmatic 
and liberal, and leaves a wide latitude for 
varied thought and theories. 

In the fall Adam not only brought ruin 
to his moral nature, but to his physical and 
intellectual faculties as well. Aside from the 
question of physical death, he was depraved 
and under condemnation of God and the 


The Fact and Its Transmission 241 

moral law. He is saved from physical death 
and permitted to become the father of the 
race. i ‘ He is now Adam the fallen ; a sinner 
— ont of favor — nnder sentence — gnilty — 
driven from Eden — his heritage and heart 
clonded with sin and crime — self-centered 
and nnder the frown of his Maker, exposed 
to endless wrath ; yet he was Adam re- 
prieved: provisionally redeemed; offered 
pardon ; placed nnder circumstances of 
mercy; encouraged and helped to regain his 
lost position of favor.’ ’ The Pelagians dis- 
sent from this view and claim that Adam 
was affected only in his personal relations 
to law. 

They would have us to believe that Adam 
was not interfered with subjectively and that 
man is not diseased, but rather in a state of 
health, needing diet. Also that in course of 
time man may rid himself of the present ef- 
fects of sin. This might be explained as a 
kind of salvation by good breeding. We do 
not claim that there are no high and noble 
qualities in humanity, but we do find a sin- 
ful tendency in every man, which no long line 
16 


242 


The Fact of Sin 


of saints can eradicate from his nature. No 
internal diet nor external environment can 
ever achieve complete restoration to right- 
eousness. The difficulty lies too deep for any 
remedy save that which we have in the po- 
tency of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. 

In a study of this question Dr. Denney 
claims that 4 ‘ there are two interests which 
Christian theology must keep in view. First, 
the effect of sin on human nature, and espe- 
cially on the human will, must he such that 
man needs a redeemer ; and, secondly, it must 
only be such that he remains susceptible of re- 
demption. It is only when we fully recognize 
what men have done, that we can insist on 
what they are unable to do. And the doc- 
trine of spiritual inability, as consequent on 
the corruption of man’s nature by sin, re- 
mains and will always remain to represent 
the great truth that there is one thing which 
man can not do alone. He can not bring his 
state into harmony with his nature. He can 
not fulfill the destiny for which he was cre- 
ated. He can not enter into peace with God 
as if his sin and its consequences were noth- 


The Fact and Its Transmission 243 

ing; he can not annul the past; he can not 
overcome it; he can not, in spite of it, enjoy 
the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
When a man has been discovered who has 
been able, without Christ, to reconcile him- 
self to God and to obtain dominion over the 
world and sin, then the doctrine of inability 
or of the bondage due to sin may be denied; 
then , but not till then.” 














XII 

THE FACT AND ITS RELATIONS 


4 


“ Christ came to give an actual present salvation ; to de- 
liver us from the hell of sin within us and to fill us with the 
heaven of holiness. Sin is the source and substance, the 
fire and the worm of hell, and from it Christ would save us 
now.” — Professor R. Flint. 


“ The remedy must be as deep as the disease. Inas- 
much as sin is more than moral corruption, its cure must be 
more than ethical reformation. Since sin consists essen- 
tially in apostasy from God, redemption must be nothing 
less than a reconciliation issuing in a restoration of com- 
munion with God.” — W. F. Adeney. 


THE RELATIONS 


God is infinite and absolute as Deity, but 
even Deity may impose upon itself limitation 
when acting in relation to other spheres of 
life. It does not take from the omnipotence 
and omniscience of God to claim that, while 
He could create perfectly innocent beings, 
yet He could not create men who were holy 
and tested in character, except by making 
them free moral agents and placing them in 
a world where sin, although not an actuality, 
was at least a possibility. If we say that 
divine omnipotence has no limitations, then 
the natural result is universalism. The rea- 
son for this limitation is found in the motive 
which led to man’s creation. True love and 
obedience, as well as proper objects for the 
bestowment of love, can only be where free 
choice determines character. 

The creation of a world could not add to 
the sovereignty of God ; and as to divine love, 
247 


248 


The Fact of Sin 


there was a place for that in the Trinity. 
The supreme object of the Creator was the 
development of a race under freedom. Sin 
entered and a new race center had to be pro- 
vided. Sin interfered with the solidarity of 
the race. It had no place in the divine plan, 
and if men had not sinned the first race 
would have been complete. Sin brought a 
Savior. All men were conditionally re- 
deemed. Some will persist in rejecting the 
divine offer, and they shall finally be severed 
from the race proper. This separation is 
what constitutes the death of the wicked. 
God has so freely provided for man’s re- 
demption that self-assertion and willful con- 
tinuation in sin is the only power that can 
separate us from the love of Christ and ex- 
clude us from the new race of holy men. 

The Lord speaks of sin in no uncertain 
way. Many superficially teach that God’s 
attitude toward sin is merely one of arbitrary 
choice and capable of being altered at any 
time. “They fail to realize,” says Dr. Cur- 
tis, “that God could not be God, that He 
could not exist at all, without hating sin. 


The Fact and Its Relations 249 

But we must not go to the other extreme of 
holding that this divine hatred is but an in- 
tense smiting by an impersonal law, and that 
there is no personality involved. This divine 
hatred of sin is grounded in God’s holiness 
and finds expression not only in depravity 
and the broken brotherhood, but also in the 
natural world. ’ ’ From Genesis to Revelation 
we see God’s abhorrence and loathing of sin. 
It is only evil, and that continually. He can 
not look upon it with the least degree of sat- 
isfaction. Every creature that has been 
touched and tainted by evil bears an impress 
of its abnormal character. The blight and 
ruin we behold on every hand witness to 
God’s disapproval. Every voice of revela- 
tion and every act of providence are against 
the wrong and in favor of the right. It has 
no place in the divine plan, no excuse for its 
existence anywhere or at any time. “God 
hath no pleasure in wickedness, neither shall 
evil dwell with Him.” 

‘ ‘ Guilt ’ ’ may be defined as self-condemna- 
tion resulting from some conscious act of dis- 
obedience. Its nature is personal, and there- 


250 


The Fact of Sin 


fore can not be imputed. We do not gain it 
through creation or by inheritance. Guilt 
always points toward the future. Man may 
be guilty for the sins of his offspring, but 
never for those of his ancestors. The ques- 
tion of authorship is the universal basis in 
the idea of guilt. We must not only be con- 
scious that sin is in the world and in us, but 
that we are causal to it. The individual 
conscience addresses the personality and ex- 
claims, “Thou art the man!” It is only 
when we treat sin theoretically and philo- 
sophically that we can even temporally refer 
it to God or some combination of external 
forces. The very moment we come to think 
on the evil in our own lives we find how ab- 
solutely impossible it is to escape personal 
responsibility and, hence, guilt for sin. And, 
after all, the solution of the difficult universal 
problem is in the solution of the easy per- 
sonal problem. Our difficulties are largely 
due to our taking hold of the large end of 
the problem, rather than the small end. Thus 
world problems are reduced to the simplicity 
of knowing self. 


The Fact and Its Relations 251 

The feeling of responsibility which conies 
through onr consciousness of freedom is the 
basis of guilt. Because of this fact we feel 
the force of ought in relation to our moral 
ideal, and conscience warns us against trans- 
gressing this inner law of duty. Ability to 
do the right is causal to guilt. We rebel 
against God, and there follows a sense of 
deserved penalty. We lose our peace of 
conscience. It was this that prompted our 
first parents to seek a hiding-place from God. 
It was this that caused Judas to return the 
thirty pieces of silver and drove him to sui- 
cide. It is this that causes the criminal to 
confess his crime and submit to punishment. 
It is this that moves the multitudes to repent- 
ance and reformation. 

Sin determines guilt, and guilt measures 
sin. “ There can never be sinless guilt or 
guiltless sin. ,, These two terms are thus in- 
separably connected. However, we may dis- 
tinguish between them by saying that “the 
act is harmful, but the actor is guilty.” The 
fact that the moral law prohibits the act ren- 
ders the transgressor liable to penalty. A 


252 


The Fact of Sin 


man may be guilty before bis own standard 
of morality, apart from Christianity. He has 
a sense of violation of an ideal which is cer- 
tain to bring remorse. It renders him dis- 
satisfied with self for the time being, until 
by some means he is able to rid himself of 
this feeling. But this is a lower form of 
guilt and not equal to that which comes to 
a man who realizes that he has committed a 
crime, not only against his fellow-man, but 
against the very holiness of a loving Heav- 
enly Father. There comes a feeling that the 
favor of God has been forfeited, a deep- 
seated guilt which cries out, “I have sinned 
against heaven and in Thy sight/ ’ 

Plutarch gives us a vivid picture of the 
awful reality of guilt in a scene at a public 
altar, where “men with tear-stained eyes 
and pallid and woe-begone countenances are 
literally rolling in the mire, seeking to have 
lifted a burden that was too real to be shaken 
off or laughed away. ’ ’ This seems dark and 
hard, but it is the way that leads to light and 
peace. 

The measure of our realization of the 


The Fact and Its Relations 


253 


holiness of God not only adds to onr concep- 
tion of sin, but also of onr consciousness of 
guilt. Guilt may become so real as to pre- 
vent a willing prayer and, in its frenzy, wel- 
come stern justice as an effective means of 
restoration. The very remorse of conscience 
which follows transgression evidences to 
God’s displeasure with sin. We may truly 
say that right must he right, since wrong 
brings guilt. It is not conscience, but sin- 
caused guilt, that makes cowards of us all. 
Apart from guilt conscience produces uncom- 
promising heroes and martyrs. 

The measure of guilt is determined by 
three things: the character of the motive 
which prompted the act; the conception of 
divine holiness, and the character of the sin 
itself. Luther often cried out, “0, my sins, 
my sins!” and yet it is said he was unable 
to name any particular sins, showing very 
clearly that his guilt was based on a sin-state 
of the whole life rather than being due to any 
special acts of evil. 

“ There are times,” says B. W. Dale, 
“when, in addition to the burden of my per- 


254 


The Fact of Sin 


sonal transgressions, I seem to share the re- 
sponsibility of that ‘fall of man’ which has 
‘brought death nnto the world and all our 
woe.’ There are times when I can not think 
of the sins, even the grossest sins, of other 
men, as though I were wholly free from the 
guilt of them, for we share a common life, 
and there is a solidarity of the race in sin.” 
Here we have the solidarity of the race as 
causal to guilt, and, on the other hand, the 
sense of guilt for others’ sins gives evidence 
of the fact that we share in some mysterious 
manner a common and unified life. 

Sin is not always an essential to suffering. 
We might have a sinless world and still have 
physical suffering. Physical evil must be dis- 
tinguished from personal sin. A child may 
suffer through inherited disease. There 
seems to be a necessity in the formation of 
character by right motives which forbids 
righteousness being the pledge of exemption 
from suffering. If only the sinner was af- 
flicted, the unfortunate would seek salvation 
from a low motive. If in battle only the 
evil men met death, there would be a large 


The Fact and Its Relations 255 

number of superficial conversions at tbe 
breaking out of war. God did not make dis- 
ciples of men by telling them that it would 
be a life of ease and happiness, but rather 
presented the dark side, and said, “Deny all, 
and take up your cross.” They were to have 
such a high motive that they would choose 
right for right’s sake, despite all it might 
cost in suffering. So long as suffering exists 
in the world, the good as well as the evil 
must expect it as a part of life. This does 
not in any way annul the fact that the Chris- 
tian’s sorrow is lessened by a higher joy, nor 
does it interfere with the assurance of eternal 
freedom from suffering in the future life. 

Suffering is ofttimes a blessing in dis- 
guise. Affliction in many cases — like the 
trailing lashes before the entrance to the tun- 
nel or the bridge — warns us of approaching 
danger. Better a thousand afflictions than 
one sin. They work out for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
“Painful sensations,” says Professor Le 
Conte, ‘ 6 are only watchful vedettes upon the 
outposts of our organism, to warn us of ap- 


256 


The Fact of Sin 


proaching danger. Without these the cita- 
del of our life would quickly be surprised 
and taken. ’ ’ The strong man is strengthened 
by trial, while the weak man is often made 
weaker. Rightly used, it becomes the ma- 
terial ladder by which we ascend to a higher 
plane of Christian experience. The tears of 
suffering are often the lenses through which 
we behold the rainbow around the throne, 
making visible the showers of divine mercy 
that continually fall. It shuts out the noise 
of the world so that we can hear the “ choir 
invisible .’ 9 It burns out the alloy of secret 
sins and self-sufficiency, and reveals the pure 
gold of tested character. “The very fact 
that God makes pain beneficial to the afflicted 
reveals His beneficent character.” The Cre- 
ator would be unworthy of our devotion if 
He had no higher aim in man’s existence than 
mere happiness. 

Man was not intended to be a private cor- 
poration. The self-centered life can never 
attain to largeness of living. The vicarious 
element in Christ’s life in relation to sinners 
is reproduced to some degree in that of His 


The Fact and Its Relations 257 

followers. Paul believed in denying self for 
others and conld even wish himself accursed 
for his brethren’s sake. Sin in others de- 
mands sacrifice of self for others. Christ, in 
speaking of the fulfillment of duty, said, 
“Greater love hath no man than this, that 
he lay down his life for his friends.” 

We have attempted to show by the three 
kinds of suffering already mentioned that it 
is not always a direct or even an indirect re- 
sult of sin. We can only say that in a sinless 
world penal suffering would have no place. 
But aside from the beneficial and remedial 
effects of suffering in this life, there is also 
a penal element which needs consideration. 
This is, however, largely incidental. Penalty 
is the consequence of sin, but it is not al- 
ways self-inflicted. The very constitution of 
the moral sphere tends to make the way of 
the transgressor hard. It is hard because 
the inner ideal and sense of right and wrong 
are certain to bring remorse of conscience 
and because of the external laws and the 
moral standard of society. All unforgiven 
sin must inevitably be punished. The sinner 
17 


258 


The Fact of Sin 


must avail himself of the provided remedy 
for his wrongness or pay the price of self- 
induced suffering. 

The vital connection existing between suf- 
fering and sin is beautifully presented in the 
Book of Job. The richness of material, the 
dramatic style, and the sublime purpose com- 
bine in making it the masterpiece of all lit- 
erature. It may be spoken of as a dramatic 
poem on the religious philosophy of the inno- 
cent or an answer to the query, 4 4 Why do the 
righteous suffer V 9 The chief personage is 
a man 4 4 perfect in character, one who feared 
God and avoided evil . 9 9 His great prosperity 
was taken as an evidence of his piety. Be- 
fore the council of heaven an adversary ap- 
pears, questions his piety, and asks permis- 
sion to test his sincerity. The request is 
granted, and under Providence the good man 
is brought to trial. 

4 4 The main theme of the book,” says 
Driver, 4 4 controverts the theory that all suf- 
fering is a sign of divine displeasure and pre- 
supposes sin on the part of the sufferer.” 
The old Hebrew conception excluded secon- 


The Fact and Its Relations 


259 


dary causes and everything was traced direct 
to God. He was the Author and Ruler of all 
things. Great suffering meant great sins. 
In Job’s distress and despondency three 
friends come to console him. After seven 
days and seven nights of silent suffering too 
deep for utterance, Job’s hitter anguish 
finally bursts forth in cursing the day he was 
born and in a prayer for death. 

Eliphaz, “the oldest and most dignified 
being almost of prophetic rank,” reproves 
the sufferer and asserts God’s justice. 
“They that plow iniquity and sow wicked- 
ness reap the same.” The innocent and 
the upright are not cut off. He appeared 
harsh and unyielding. He had not known 
any evil in this man, but his suffering was 
certain proof to him that somewhere there 
was secret sin. Theory counted for more 
than fact. 

Bildad, who was of a conservative nature, 
refers to the moral precedents of the past. 
He would have Job take these afflictions as 
the judgments of a discriminating God who 
rewards the good and punishes the evil. 


260 


The Fact of Sin 


Zophar is a saintly character, with strong 
personal convictions as to God’s goodness. 
He accuses Job of mockery and undue com- 
plaint. To his mind the suffering was less 
than his iniquity deserved. God’s ways are 
unsearchable and man must not presume to 
judge the infinite. 

Elihu, who thus far has been a silent lis- 
tener, can no longer remain silent. He se- 
verely reproves the three friends for their 
failure to satisfactorily meet the difficulty, 
and then accuses Job of attempting to justify 
himself in the sight of God. Davidson claims 
that his chief contribution to the problem lies 
in the stress he places upon affliction as a 
discipline. 

We now come to the beginning of the 
true solution. Human remedies have all 
failed. Job is still unsatisfied and clamors 
for a hearing in the court of heaven. Man’s 
extremity becomes God’s opportunity. At 
the climactic moment God utters His voice 
out of the whirlwind. ‘ ‘ The speech is grand 
in its silence as to the individual difficulty.” 
It calls on men to get away from self and 


The Fact and Its Relations 261 

contemplate the all-sufficiency of the infinite. 
The supreme struggle is to understand God, 
and not to escape suffering. He presents no 
philosophical theory in explanation of man’s 
suffering. He would dispel the clouds of 
humanity’s misfortune by presenting the 
brightness of Divinity’s glory. 

Man must learn that punishment is not 
always penal, but may be productive of good. 
That physical suffering and material loss 
may be spiritual profit and heavenly gain. 
That humility of self — which we interpret as 
descent — is ofttimes the mysterious path- 
way which leads to the mount of vision. We 
rise above the clouds and storm and get a 
life-lasting glimpse of the glory which is 
about to be revealed. There comes a spirit 
of submission and trust which makes it pos- 
sible to count all things but loss. Man is so 
to lay hold on God as to be unmindful of 
“ these light afflictions,” and to exclaim in 
times of most discouraging circumstances, 

‘ ‘ Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. ’ ’ 
The rough and stony road over which we 
travel with tired and bleeding feet is no 


262 


The Fact of Sin 


longer the way of the transgressor. Earthly 
loss becomes heavenly gain. The cloudy 
vision disappears and he exclaims, with ec- 
static confidence : 

“ I know that my Redeemer liveth 

And that He shall stand up at last upon the earth ; 

And after my skin has thus been destroyed, 

Yet in my flesh shall I see God.” 

“Behind a frowning Providence he be- 
holds a smiling face.” The end is not de- 
feat, but victory. Job’s theodicy was faulty, 
but it welcomes divine correction. The best 
apology for the value of divine aid in human 
suffering is to be found in the words: “In 
all these things Job neither sinned nor judged 
God foolishly.” 

His former prosperity is doubled. His 
scope of Providence is widened. God is justi- 
fied and man is satisfied. Suffering is no 
longer to be interpreted as the certain evi- 
dence of sin, but to be looked upon as no 
respecter of persons. The victorious culmi- 
nation of righteousness over evil is assured. 
Sin is by permission, and not of divine origin. 
The complete mystery of evil is yet nn- 


The Fact and Its Relations 263 

solved. But over every suffering child faith 
beholds a tender, loving Father “keeping 
watch above His own.” The night of afflic- 
tion may come, but the Sun of Righteousness 
never fails to rise with healing in His wings. 
Satan has his say now, but the final verdict 
and triumphant oration is to be of God. Dis- 
cord is of the present, but divine harmony 
comes in the future. God is just because 
God is God, and faith interprets doubt: 

“ Blind unbelief is sure to err, 

And scan His work in vain ; 

God is His own interpreter 
And He will make it plain.” 

We have now reached a stage in the doc- 
trine of sin where we are prepared to intro- 
duce the question of future punishment. The 
truth and necessity of penalty for those who 
persist in rebelling against God is evidenced 
by the teaching of all religions. Justice de- 
mands it, and conscience approves the ver- 
dict. Mankind in general entertains a very 
cheap notion of divine wrath. It would be 
contrary to His very being to inflict penalty 
in the sense in which we speak of it in rela- 


264 


The Fact of Sin 


tion to man. God desires every man to be 
saved. He has no pleasure in the sin of the 
disobedient, nor in the death of the wicked. 
Just rulers dislike to imprison men for life. 
They are pained when it becomes necessary 
to execute the criminal. They would like to 
see every man a good citizen and the state of 
society to be such as never to necessitate the 
arrest of a single individual. But crime and 
disobedience of themselves necessitate judg- 
ment. Government must be protected and 
law upheld. We have no basis for the asser- 
tion that future punishment is to be cor- 
rective. 

The teaching of many would make punish- 
ment more potent as a means of regenera- 
tion than redemptive love. Christ’s atone- 
ment becomes an acknowledged failure and 
needs to be supplemented by “purgatorial 
redemption,” which is assumed to accomplish 
what divine love could not do. “If punish- 
ment renovates, Muller asks whether it is 
a kindness to exempt any man from it until 
it has fully accomplished its end. And how 
is it indeed possible that, if punishment reno- 


The Fact and Its Relations 


265 


vates, that its removal, redemption, also reno- 
vates? He also states that divine chastise- 
ment, as beneficent, in the Scriptures is very 
distinctly referred only to those who have re- 
ceived the renewing grace of God and have 
become children by faith in Christ .’ 9 There 
must be, then, in all our thinking a marked 
distinction between what the Bible terms di- 
vine chastisement and divine punishment. 
One is disciplinary, while the other is wholly 
penal. We must be very superficial states- 
men if we find no place for retributive jus- 
tice, remembering always that suffering is 
not imputed, but self-originated. 

The nation that is just in its punishment 
of the law-breaker must itself be just. If 
God were the author of sin, future punish- 
ment would be the height of injustice. But 
since we have previously shown that He is 
not its author; since man is a free moral 
agent, and not under necessity; since inher- 
ited depravity does not imply guilt or sin; 
since sin is not an infirmity of the flesh, nor 
an error of the intellect; since the character- 
istics of sin free us from unjust demands, 


266 


The Fact of Sin 


and since every man has both the ability and 
the opportunity to he saved, eternal punish- 
ment becomes the highest expression of 
justice. 

“Fatherhood is not infinite good-nature, 
oblivious of faults, indulgent to the wrong- 
doer, and tolerant of wrong. There is some- 
thing more terrible in the attitude of the 
father to sin than of the judge to crime, for 
the judge sees in the crime only an offense 
against law, hut the father feels in sin the 
ruin of his son. The judge regards the crim- 
inal only as a person against whom the law 
is to he vindicated, but the father regards 
the son as a person out of whom sin is to 
he expelled. God can never be reconciled 
to the being of sin, or be anything else than 
its supreme enemy. ’ n “ Even the relation of 
parent and child,’ ’ says Dr. Denney, “must 
be one in which — ethically speaking — some 
things are forever obligatory, and some 
things forever impossible; in other words, it 
must he a relation determined by law, and 
law which can not deny itself.” Men are 


l Fairbairn, Christ in Mod. Theol., p. 467. 


The Fact and Its Relations 


267 


more anxious to escape justice than they are 
to free themselves from guilt and sin. They 
are ready to use any accessible analogy they 
can imagine to exist between the divine and 
human fact of parentage. 

The universal assurance that the Judge 
of all the earth will do right has lightened 
the burdens of humanity’s weary ones, has 
ministered to misfortune’s millions, has 
transformed prisons into palaces, has 
cheered the down-trodden slaves of serfdom, 
has illumined the dark pathway of affliction, 
and has given martyr courage to God’s un- 
numbered heroes. We rejoice to know that 
some day condemned innocence shall be vin- 
dicated, persecuted purity shall gain a pro- 
tector, and earth’s injustice find a final judg- 
ment seat. 

Let us briefly examine the conclusions of 
J. Edgar Beet in his book entitled “The 
Last Things.” In a study of the Pauline 
Epistles he states that Paul holds strongly 
to the notion of punishment being eternal and 
the ruin final, and that there is no intima- 
tion of any future probation. In John’s Gos- 


268 


The Fact of Sin 


pel he discovers nothing additional that can 
change the Pauline doctrine, aside from some 
passage which may he interpreted as meta- 
phors. The Synoptics give punishment a 
more conspicuous place than the preceding. 
Christ opens the door of the eternal prison, 
and we hear the wailing of the lost. ‘ 4 Abso- 
lute endlessness of punishment” is here 
strongly emphasized. 

In Revelation “actual suffering is even 
more conspicuous than in the Synoptics” 
and “ceaseless torment” more emphatically 
expressed. He sums up the whole matter by 
saying that “the writers of the New Testa- 
ment agree in describing, with more or less 
definiteness, the punishment to he inflicted in 
the day of Christ’s return as final separation 
from the blessedness of the saved. They give 
no ground for hope that the agony of the lost 
will ever cease; but they do not plainly and 
categorically assert its endless continuance.” 

The author finally says that the doctrine 
is not so “decisively” stated as the “primary 
doctrines.” What constitutes a “primary 
doctrine ?” Can we find any doctrine more 


The Fact and Its Relations 269 

strongly emphasized? If the words “ eter- 
nal,” “ ceaseless/ ’ and ‘ ‘ everlasting ’ ’ mean 
anything, they leave no donbt of the fact. If 
we hold to the doctrines of justification by 
faith, regeneration, and witness of the Spirit, 
which are presented no more emphatically, 
then we can see no escape from the doctrine 
of endless punishment. “No ground for 
hope of the agony of the lost ever ceasing/ ’ 
comes very near to an admission of proof 
and leaves very little ground for any assump- 
tion to the contrary. After asserting Paul’s 
teaching, he, in a later discussion, says that 
“in the Epistles of Paul and Peter we have 
important” teaching about the doom of the 
lost, implying actual suffering, hut no state- 
ment or indication of duration. Their silence 
is very significant. 

But we may ask if there is any correlative 
doctrine that has more passages in its sup- 
port. The weakest part of the argument is 
his reference to the irrelevancy of the doc- 
trine with a God of infinite love, followed by 
the assertion that “no one of us would in- 
flict such a penalty on the vilest offender .” 1 


IDr. Beet’s “ The Last Things,” p. 207. 


m 


The Fact of Sin 


This is a destructive type of rationalism 
that would measure all God ’s acts by the dic- 
tates of human reason. Would any man dare 
compare our notion of sin with that which is 
possessed by a God of absolute holiness and 
justice? “What our moral sense forbids us 
to do to others we can not conceive that God 
will do.” This is too humanistic to require 
us to show its deception by referring in de- 
tail to God’s dealing with men. 

Would our moral sense have sent the only- 
begotten Son of God to suffer and die for 
sinful and rebellious men? There must al- 
ways exist an infinite difference between the 
divine and human facts of fatherhood. The 
child ought not to find fault with the father ’s 
treatment, since a more matured experience 
would withhold present judgment. 

If we allow the author to go back to the 
Old Testament, and even to Homer, for the 
meaning of New Testament words, then we 
allow a violation of the laws which govern 
the development of language, which would 
destroy the true interpretation of all New 
Testament doctrines. If we translate “aio- 


The Fact and Its Relations 271 

nos” as meaning “ age-lasting, ’ ’ then “ha- 
martia” is no longer sin, but merely a ref- 
erence to marksmanship. We can not believe 
that when the inspired writers used the word 
“ eternal ” with its current meaning that they 
meant less than they said. When Peter spoke 
of “eternal glory’ ’ and “unfading inherit- 
ance,” did he mean what he said, or some- 
thing else? We all know that there are scores 
of words in common use to-day that had al- 
most an entirely different meaning even a 
century ago. The forty passages where 
Christ and the apostles refer to “eternal,” 
“everlasting,” and “unending” life as the 
future reward to the righteous, must have a 
new interpretation placed upon them. God 
is no longer infinite and “eternal.” His at- 
tributes must be accommodated to this ‘ 4 new 
eisegesis,” and He Himself becomes only an 
age-lasting God. 

Is this our “New Theology” and our new 
message to a sin-biased world desiring an ex- 
cuse for its wickedness? Is this to be our 
answer to God’s rebellious and sin-loving 
subjects, who through all the centuries have 


272 


The Fact of Sin 


been seeking an anodyne for the remorse 
of their guilty consciences ? The fires of Ge- 
henna have finally been quenched and in 
their place we have only the “age-lasting 
contemplation of past sins.” Yv T e are not 
seeking to dogmatize as to the character of 
future punishment — the teaching much of 
which is figurative, admits of varied inter- 
pretations — but as to its duration we main- 
tain that its “endlessness” is unmistakably 
taught throughout the New Testament. 

If “eternal” is to become “ age-lasting, ” 
then God must arbitrarily make the change, 
and such an act would destroy the attributes 
of divinity and annul the very essence of sin. 
“Compulsory restoration,” says Principal 
Fairbairn, in his “Christ in Modern The- 
ology,” “is only another form of annihila- 
tion. Freedom is of the essence of man, and 
he must be freely saved to be saved at all. 
Were he saved at the expense of his freedom, 
he would be not so much saved as lost. For 
the very seat and soul of personality is will ; 
and were the will suspended, especially in the 
article of its supreme choice, the personality 


The Fact and Its Relations 273 

would be destroyed. Sin is not to be van- 
quished, either by the destruction of the com- 
pulsory restoration of the sinner, but by 
his free salvation; and should this fail of ac- 
complishment, yet God will have been so 
manifested by the attempt at it that all the 
universe will feel as if there had come to it 
a vision of love that made it taste the ecstasy 
and beatitude of the divine.’ ’ 

The relation of sin to children is largely 
theoretical. They are objects of special com- 
passion and favor with our Heavenly Father. 
The plan of salvation can not be rigidly ad- 
hered to in reference to them. Its special 
mission is to the voluntary transgressor. 
There is an unconditional and immediate 
benefit which comes to all, but when we speak 
of redemption from sin we refer especially 
to those who have reached the age of account- 
ability. 

Augustine taught that “unless infants re- 
ceive the benefits of the sacraments they are 
manifestly in danger of damnation. But 
damned they can not be without sin. Now, 
since they have no sin of their own (‘in vita 
18 


274 


The Fact of Sin 


propria’), it is necessary for ns to credit 
them with original sin, however unintelligible 
the mystery.” This dogmatism was due to 
his theories of the Chnrch and was capable 
of making “necessary” anything from 
damnation of infants to the imputation of 
sin to the innocent. 

The consensus of opinion favors the sin- 
lessness of children. They are guiltless and 
free from any disfavor on the part of God. 
Christ welcomes them as models of innocence 
and possessors of His kingdom. Any doc- 
trine that teaches the damnation of God’s 
little ones is both anti-Scriptural and unrea- 
sonable. The child is not under law, hut 
under grace. Knowledge of the law must 
precede responsible transgression. 

The primal effect of sin in the individual 
was a conscious loss of the divine favor. 
Personal sin excluded him from Paradise and 
condemned him as worthy of death. Mercy 
stayed the execution of the sentence and of- 
fered, on condition of pardon, “Paradise re- 
gained. ’ ’ The appreciation of the divine pur- 
pose in the creation of man will greatly aid 


The Fact and Its Relations 275 

ns in understanding our personal relation- 
ship to sin. This can not he determined 
wholly by the present divine attitude. God 
loves man for what he might have been, 
rather than for what he is in his present 
state. There is a long distance between Eden 
and Calvary, and a wide distinction between 
untested innocency in Paradise and volun- 
tary martyrdom for conscience’s sake in 
Rome. 

Many hold that Adam was created phys- 
ically immortal, and that it was the fall that 
brought physical death to men. This is, 
however, a disputed decision and remains an 
open question. When Paul declared that ‘ ‘ by 
one man came death,” did he mean physical, 
spiritual, or both? The whole problem is 
centered in the word “thanatos,” death. 
Hundreds of volumes have been written in 
defense of various theories, and yet it re- 
mains unsettled. 

In passing we would state that there is 
no certain proof in Genesis that Adam was 
not primarily mortal and that he would not 
have experienced death even though he had 


276 


The Fact of Sin 


not sinned. Death may be unnatural and 
abnormal under present conditions, but sin 
has rendered all things unnatural. But 
would it have seemed so revolting if sin had 
not entered the race? 1 1 The sting of death 
is sin,” and the apostle here undoubtedly 
means physical death. It seems reasonable 
to suppose that if sin did not exist, and the 
sting which results from sin was not present, 
physical death would not he so abhorrent. 
The death of a little child has the quietude 
of restful sleep. We teach that the child is 
guiltless, and therefore sinless. Then how 
can we say that the child dies as a result of 
Adam’s sin? 

The natural interpretation and most prob- 
able meaning of the two statements, “ death 
through Adam,” “life through Christ,” is 
that the words “life” and “death” are 
placed in antithesis. The life which the sec- 
ond Adam brought was not physical immor- 
tality, but spiritual life, here and hereafter. 
Therefore the result of Adam’s fall was spir- 
itual, not physical death. This strengthens 
the teaching of the passage and is as much in 
harmony with the context as the other. 


The Fact and Its Relations MV 

The result of the fall was not confined to 
the moral and spiritual part of man. As to 
his mental endowments and ability to use them 
in the acquisition of knowledge, primitive 
man was not biased by evil. We come into 
the world with our intellects affected by sin. 
The ‘ ‘ infallible monitor ’ ’ which was to aid in 
the attainment of completeness of knowledge 
has become fallible. Sin brought upon the 
race mental as well as moral infirmity. The 
individual is a unit, and one member can not 
suffer without impairing in some degree the 
other parts. Human nature has no water- 
tight compartments. “The relation of love 
is severed. Man is out of God, and God is 
out of man. How distant God has become 
from man is plain from the fact that He now 
advances to them from without; and how 
strange men have become to God is plain 
from the fact that they hide themselves from 
His presence .’ 9 

‘ ‘ To abandon souls He loved, even though 
they had abandoned Him, would be to punish 
man’s faithlessness by ceasing to be faithful 
to Himself. Nor could He make man happy 


278 


The Fact of Sin 


in sin, for here there was a twofold impossi- 
bility: first, happiness is not something that 
can he made — it must be worked from within, 
earned, that it may be enjoyed; and sec- 
ondly, His own happiness is moral, and He 
can create happiness only by means of a 
moral perfection akin to His own. What be- 
came Him, then, was to save man from sin. 
He so loved the world that He could do no 
other than will to save it. He so pitied man 
that to redeem him He could not spare Him- 
self. To say ‘God is love’ means He must be 
the Savior .” 1 

The relation of sin to the individual is 
so vital to the wholeness of his life that even 
the memory and imagination, the emotions 
and the finer sensibilities bear the Edenic 
taint. Turning to the heart — the center of 
the affections — we find it described as “de- 
ceitful above all things and desperately 
wicked. ” “ All the imaginations of the heart 
are evil, and that continually.” Out of the 
heart are the issues of all vice and corrup- 
tion. The very fountain of human life has 


l Christ in Mod. Theol.— Fairbairn, p.465. 


The Fact and Its Relations 279 

been rendered impure. The will, which is the 
arbiter of man’s destiny, has an hereditary 
bias in favor of sin, which adds to the in- 
tensity of the struggle against good. The 
motivity of the good has been lessened. But 
the “sin-blinded eye, the deafened ear, the 
hardened heart, and the corrupted nature” 
are not sufficient to enslave the human will. 
The weight of man’s own personality — plus 
the atoning gift — remain sufficient to overbal- 
ance them all, if the will so decides. The 
field of motive choice has changed in the 
wicked man’s life, but he is still conscious of 
the power of elective volition, however de- 
ficient he may be in executive volition. 

The fact of sin is vitally related to the 
atonement. Sin is of man, but salvation is 
of God. The cross not only expresses God’s 
hatred of sin, but it represents the final ef- 
fort of the sinner. Innocence had been con- 
demned at the hands of the guilty. They had 
dragged His bruised and bleeding body up 
the rocky steeps of Calvary, nailed it to the 
cross, and pressed down upon His brow the 
crown of thorns. Heaven dropped her cur- 


280 


The Fact of Sin 


tains to darken the scene. The temporal vic- 
tory of sin is to result in its eternal defeat. 
Innocence will be vindicated and truth shall 
have her resurrection morn. Man’s verdict 
was defeat, but God saw in it a splendid vic- 
tory. The cross was not the final surrender, 
but the beginning of a triumphal march. It 
was to be the banner of God’s army in the 
warfare against sin. Because Christ con- 
quered, His followers will conquer. Dr. Den- 
ney, in his recent volume, “The Atonement 
and the Modern Mind,” states “that if the 
atonement is anything it is everything. It 
is the most profound of all truths, and the 
most recreative. It determines more than 
anything else our conceptions of God, of 
man, of history, and even of nature. For 
those who recognize it at all it is Christianity 
in brief ; it concentrates in itself all that the 
wisdom, power, and love of God mean in 
relation to sinful men.” Were we asked to 
inscribe on the cross some message it has 
brought to us, on one side we would write, 
God so loved, and on the other, the wages 


OF SIN IS DEATH. 


The Fact and Its Relations 281 

We stated in the beginning that the di- 
vine aim in the creation of man as a free 
moral agent was that He might develop a 
race of holy men. Adam was the primal 
parental head of the race, bnt his fall inter- 
fered with its possible solidarity. Through 
the genetic relations of the first pair to their 
offspring a depraved nature was transmitted. 
This fact considered in connection with hu- 
man freedom made it impossible to effect a 
reconstruction except by means of an atone- 
ment, which would meet “original depravity 
with original grace. ’ ’ This done, every man 
is made equally responsible with Adam. He 
is also brought into a conditional relation 
with the new head of the race. Adam for- 
feited his right of the headship of the race 
and all men mysteriously received an inborn 
tendency to sin; Christ, being without sin, 
became the “new head” of the race. Hence- 
forth new life was to pulsate in the spiritual 
veins of every member of the new race. 

Incarnation was necessary to redemption. 
Sin had not only alienated man from God, 
but it had power to destroy the alien. The 


282 


The Fact of Sin 


fact that Christ became human in the sense 
that He took upon Himself our nature, de- 
stroys the false theory of substitution. He 
is now the living head of the new spiritual 
race. His death availed for my guilt and 
penalty because I now live in Him and He 
in me. The incarnation effected the * ‘ at-one- 
ment ’ ’ of the finite and the infinite and made 
His blood effectual for human redemption. 
That the incarnation was necessary to reveal 
God’s love to man is based on the false as- 
sumption that it had not previously been re- 
vealed. 

We more correctly denominate it as an- 
other phase of that divine love which had for 
centuries been known to Israel. There may 
be as much love in the father’s chastening of 
the child as there is in the service and sacri- 
fice of daily ministry. The incarnation cer- 
tainly had a deeper content than revelation. 
It was the power which was capable of ef- 
fecting the at-one-ment of the Father and 
estranged child. The method of its attain- 
ment was by the earth-touch of the heaven- 
life made possible by the human incarnation 


The Fact and Its Relations 


283 


of the Divine Son. This was the tragedy of 
the centuries and the divine mystery of the 
ages. If we take the familiar example of the 
prodigal and “the certain man/’ the hin- 
drance is not in the unknown love of the 
Father, but in the disobedience of the son. 
Sin had erected a barrier between the known 
love of the Father and the heart of a rebel- 
lious son. The seat of the difficulty is in the 
heart of the prodigal, and a divine power is 
needed that will cause this sin-citizen of the 
far country to come to self-realization and be 
willing to journey home and accept the wait- 
ing pardon of a constantly-known love. 

Christ did not bear my sins altogether 
because He was divine, nor did He simply 
die in my stead as a merciful God or as a 
compassionate angel. He did not loose us 
from our sins by an isolated sacrifice which 
was sufficient to propitiate an offended God, 
or to portray the love of our Heavenly Fa- 
ther so that it might furnish a moral influ- 
ence motive in favor of our return. He did 
not simply offer satisfaction for our offenses, 
nor did He die in support of the moral gov- 


284 


The Fact of Sin 


ernment of God. He did all this , and He 
did infinitely more. He became flesh and 
dwelt among ns. The pulsations of human 
life became a part of divine life. He was 
weary and heavy laden, a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief. He experienced 
hunger and loneliness. In His own body He 
bore our pain and penalty. His was not the 
sacrifice of an angel or an inhabitant of an- 
other world, dying for the sins of men with 
whom He had no vital connection. He en- 
tered into our real life and drank the “ bit- 
ter cup” for you and for me. 

Men can not consistently object to the di- 
vine method of redemption. Christ is the 
Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, 
which taketh away the sin of the world. 
“Gethsemane and Calvary became concrete 
presentations of age-long facts: the fact on 
the one hand that holiness must punish sin; 
and the fact on the other hand that He who 
gave His life to man at the beginning must 
share man’s guilt and penalty.” Some say 
that it was possible for Christ to atone for 
the sin of the world because He was without 


The Fact and Its Relations 285 

sin; others say that it was due to His divin- 
ity, and still others claim that it was from 
the fact of His connection in the Godhead. 
All these and many other elements entered 
into the atoning work, but the one which jus- 
tifies God and renders it effective from the 
human side is His vital connection and union 
with us as well as with the Father. 

“Christ, because of what He was as the 
Divine Son of God, was capable of communi- 
cating between the finite and infinite. Were 
He cut off from God, He could be no source 
of life. Were He cut off from man, He would 
be no normal or natural and, therefore, no 
universal medium of distribution. The doc- 
trine of the incarnation is the theory which, 
by the union or coexistence of the two na- 
tures in His person, explains His sufficiency 
for His functions as Mediator and Savior .” 1 
It is the one fact that throws light on His 
earthly life, the agony in Gethsemane, the 
hesitation at death, and His vicarious suffer- 
ing on the cross. 

According to Dr. Curtis the real problem 


l Fairbairn, Christ in Mod. Theol., p. 471. 


286 


The Fact of Sin 


of redemption from sin has two phases: the 
personal side , which has to do with the mak- 
ing of holy men, and the racial side , which is 
concerned with the brotherhood or solidarity 
of the race. The new race is to consist not in 
a number of individual holy men, but is to 
be a holy race. Some will choose to sin and 
continue to rebel against God, and they will 
finally be isolated from the race. We can 
readily see that, while this new race-center 
makes it possible for all to come in, yet it will 
not include the complete race as it might 
have done had Adam not sinned. 

The introduction of sin into the world 
has made it necessary for God to effect cer- 
tain things for those who, without any guilt 
on their part, come into the world with an 
inherited tendency to evil. Christ not only 
meets this, but He provides for future ob- 
stacles which hinder man in his return to 
God. He becomes the incarnation of the 
moral Ruler. All justice and judgment cen- 
ter in Him. He takes the place of the sin- 
biased conscience. It is not too much to say 
“Christ is my conscience. ’ * The moral law 


The Fact and Its Relations 


287 


is not done away, bnt it is exalted, and we 
find in Christ onr present standard. He 
takes care of onr peace with the past and 
our assurance of the present. We walk with 
Him day by day, and He becomes to us “ the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The fasci- 
nation of sin is broken, not by His suffering 
and death, but by the presence and power of 
His Holy Spirit. His influence upon the con- 
science produces a hunger for the higher life, 
and we voluntarily forsake the old and accept 
the new life. 

We have, as a result of the atonement, 
a new race made out of the old one, with 
Christ as the Second Adam. Man is re- 
deemed and God is justified. The rebellious 
sinner of his own free choice is cut off from 
the race. The Christian lives in union with 
Christ here, and in the life to come attains 
His likeness. The moral law is upheld, the 
total nature of God is satisfied, and there is 
a way made possible for the salvation of 
every sinner. 





XIII 

THE FACT IN CONCLUSION 


19 


“Assert eternal Providence, 

And justify the ways of God to men." 

— Milton. 


“ The acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 

And has so far advanced thee to be wise.” 

— Browning. 


“ No argument that attempts to justify the ways of God 
to men can afford to forget the full measure and duration of 
God’s relation to man. Time and eternity are one ; he who 
is and he who is to be are one and the same person ; and 
his life, its meaning, purpose, discipline, can never be 
understood if he be regarded as a mere mortal being, with 
no existence save what begins with birth and ends with 
death. What to a mortal might well seem unmitigated evil 
may appear to the immortal only a discipline the better 
qualifying him for his immortality.” 

— Principal A. M. Fairbairn. 


THE CONCLUSION 


The construction of a theodicy which 
would be able to satisfy the demands of pure 
reason is as yet nnattained. The proof of 
this statement is fonnd in the history of 
science and philosophy. “ Philosophy / 9 says 
Dr. Watson, “has been distinguished for its 
strenuous treatment of the moral problem, 
but it has been visibly hampered by circum- 
stances, being in the position of a Court 
which can not go into the whole case. If sin 
were only a defect in thought, then philos- 
ophy could treat the case ; but when we enter 
the realm of the spiritual it is logically im- 
paired.” This limitation, however, does not 
apply to real Christian philosophy, since 
some of the strongest defenders of the faith 
have been numbered among the consecrated 
scholars who have bequeathed to humanity 
their philosophical interpretations of re- 
ligion. 


291 


292 


The Fact of Sin 


But the Christian may still hope to find a 
solution of the problem, despite the failure 
of the rationalist. The divine kingdom and 
King have their own laws of interpretation, 
which are open only to those who live the 
life of the Spirit. ‘ 4 The divine government, ’ ’ 
says Van Oosterzee, “remains a difficulty to 
us until we go into the sanctuary of God.” 
Theology welcomes scholarship with all her 
wisdom, but when reason has reached the ul- 
timate limits of research, then faith must 
come in to complete the solution. Through 
the agency of the heart and the intellect, by 
which we combine the spiritual and the nat- 
ural, we are able both to satisfy conscience 
and ratify reason. The Christian begins at 
the foundation of the moral system with the 
plan and purpose of God. 

The purpose was a race of holy men. 
Mankind will become united under Christ as 
the new head of the race. The final outcome 
of this purpose must be in harmony with the 
infinite goodness of God, and be expressive 
of his total character. “God’s purpose is 
the same in redemption that it was in crea- 


The Fact In Conclusion 


293 


tion. The first plan, the ideal plan, failed be- 
cause of sin; but this failure is now, in re- 
demption, to be made over into a triumph. 
Out of the Adamic race, broken in organism 
and doomed to destruction as a race, the work 
of Christ is to secure a new race completely 
personal, completely organic, and completely 
holy. ’ 9 

The purpose presented is worthy the char- 
acter of the Creator. We feel certain that 
it is possible for individuals, even in this 
life, to gain such a vision of the value of 
character formed under freedom as to ap- 
prove the Infinite. As finite creatures we 
shall only know in part concerning the wis- 
dom of the present moral systems, but that 
part may become so convincing as to carry 
the whole man with it in favor of God. 
Moral character, even in the life that now is, 
is instinctively recognized as the richest 
heritage of earth. It is central to every other 
attainment and made the crowning attribute 
of personality. 

The plan of God has already been stated 
as that in which human sovereignty was 


294 


The Fact of Sin 


granted to man. It is man under freedom. 
We were placed under Divine Providence 
and in a world where every call of life was 
toward the good and every warning was 
against the evil. The protection of every 
phase of our physical and mental well-being 
was carefully guarded. We were the crown- 
ing workmanship of creation, made a little 
less than God. Yet, to fulfill this purpose, the 
plan must admit of ‘ i contrary choice. ’ 9 The 
moral agent must be a probationer and meet 
the test of obedience. Viewed from the di- 
vine side, sin was merely a “possibility” 
contingent on voluntary choice, while on the 
human side sin might become an actuality if 
the individual determined to betray his 
trust. 

The philosopher is compelled to admit 
that the world in which we live is not only 
the best possible, but the only possible one 
that could fulfill the ideal of the Infinite 
Father which was inherent in the self-expres- 
sion of His creative love. That the Absolute 
had the authority and right to put into exe- 
cution His own plan, there can be no denial, 


The Fact In Conclusion 


295 


and that He was morally justified in so do- 
ing may be concluded from the fact that no 
other plan was possible even to Omniscient 
Omnipotence. There could he no high pur- 
pose in divine creation unless the created was 
made in the likeness and image of the Cre- 
ator. It is certain that we could not have 
been like our Father if we had been mere 
forms of human mechanism or some species 
of animal governed by blind instinct. We 
were made like God in that we are free moral 
agents. We may act like God if we choose 
the good and refuse the evil. 

We must all agree that moral character 
is the result of free choice, and can not be 
created even by Omnipotence. It was pos- 
sible to have had a race of divinely necessi- 
tated beings, but their lack of freedom would 
have made void responsibility, which is an 
absolute essential to the formation of char- 
acter. The Creator’s self-limitation, result- 
ing from the grant of human sovereignty, 
was a perfectly voluntary act and in no way 
interfered with His omnipotence. When per- 
sons ask why individuals were allowed this 


296 


The Fact of Sin 


freedom to sin, the answer given is fonnd in 
the statement that, while sin was not essen- 
tial to nor a part of the divine intention, still 
the “possibility” of an evil choice was nec- 
essary to the formation of a system in which 
moral character might become a reality. 

The thought presented in the following 
paragraph may prove helpfnl to some as a 
reason for the wisdom of the plan. “If it 
was good for God,” says Dr. Fairbairn, “to 
create those who conld share His own beati- 
tude, He conld do so only on the condition 
that He made them capable of rejecting that 
for which they were designed. There is no 
man with an honorable manhood within him 
who is not enlarged and ennobled by both the 
idea and the fact of fatherhood; but every 
man who wills to become a father faces the 
problem which God faced when He made the 
universe. In the home and in the family the 
father is disciplined by the child as much as 
the child is disciplined by the father, but to 
the father belongs the responsibility of the 
child’s being, and on him lie duties of self- 
restraint, of providence, of the daily concern 


The Fact In Conclusion 297 

to make all things which happen bear upon 
the formation of the higher moral qualities 
of the child. May we not say, then, that what 
justifies the responsibilities man dares to un- 
dertake when he becomes a parent justifies 
God in making a universe which shall be the 
home of reason, vocal with the harmonies of 
love and the dissonances of life?” 

The higher our conception of God and 
man, the more difficult becomes the solution 
of our problem, and yet it is only on this 
plane that we can be true to the Christian 
ideal. The denial of the infinite and the 
depreciation of the finite may annul, but they 
do not explain the mystery of evil. It is 
comparatively easy to justify the action of a 
State official, owing to the fact that the whole 
scope of the plan is before us. But when we 
come to construct a theodicy we find our- 
selves dealing with persons and precepts that 
have to do not only with time, but eternity. 
Our life experience, even when enriched by 
all the centuries of known history, comprises 
only a small segment of the arc of the past, 
though we entirely exclude the future. 


298 


The Fact of Sin 


The Divine Father deals with life in its 
completeness. With Him there is no past 
or future. He has made no promise nor 
pledge that we should fully understand His 
action toward us in this life. The purpose 
and plan are eternal, but their realization be- 
longs to time and is yet in process of devel- 
opment. 

We are apt to forget, when we consider 
the fact of sin, that we are dealing with a 
divine problem. Demands are made which 
would be applicable to a human government, 
but they are quite out of harmony with a 
divine one. It is very truthfully stated that 
“we must not assume that God’s moral re- 
lations to men and to the sins of men are 
identical with our own, and that, therefore, 
what is right for us to do must be right for 
Him to do, and that what would be wrong 
for us to do, would be wrong for Him to do.” 
This kind of superficial speculation is based 
on a false conception of Fatherhood. The 
practice is far too common of constructing 
conclusions in theology from shallow analo- 
gies drawn between God and man. 


The Fact In Conclusion 


299 


The complete scope of the divine plan in 
its relation to human freedom and the con- 
sequent actuality of evil has not yet been 
known nor revealed. We must still walk in 
part by faith, but not without the basic 
knowledge of centuries of providential his- 
tory which evidence the profound proofs of 
not only an omniscient, but an infinitely holy 
God. We can not but trust the future be- 
cause of the past. The seen becomes the 
ground for our faith in the unseen. The 
matchless wisdom of the major part of the 
plan precludes our rejection of the minor 
portion. Our approval of “the revealed’ ’ 
ought to delay our criticism of the “unre- 
vealed.” Are we keeping to the universal 
verdict of experience when we assert that our 
difficulties regarding the harmony of the ex- 
istence of evil and the goodness of God be- 
long not to the known plan, but to the un- 
known purpose? Are we too credulous and 
not sufficiently true to the just rights of rea- 
son when we plead for delay in the criticism 
of the unfinished plan and as yet unfulfilled 
purpose? If we have been, then we can not 


300 


The Fact of Sin 


expect that our reasoning will be convincing ; 
but if we can agree as to the rights of di- 
vinity in their relation to those of the indi- 
vidual, then we may still hope that our mes- 
sage has proven of value. 

We can not think it an insult to reason 
to admit that ‘ ‘ a complete theodicy is not yet 
possible on account of the wide difference 
between God’s exaltedness and our insignifi- 
cance, God’s wisdom and our short-sighted- 
ness, God’s infiniteness and our transitori- 
ness. At best we can observe something of 
the what , much less of the how , and least of 
all of the wherefore of the divine activity. 
Nor is this necessary, either for the honor 
of God, or for the edification of our neighbor, 
or for our own essential well-being. The 
mysterious element of the divine government 
on its part curbs the pride of man, calls forth 
faith with its precious fruits, and justifies the 
hope which awakens in the promised revela- 
tion of the future.” 

We are quite willing to assent to the state- 
ment of Martensen that “the true theodicy 
must be undertaken from the standpoint of 


The Fact In Conclusion 


301 


Christianity, and that the complete theodicy 
can only be given with the completed history 
of the world.’ ’ That it would be impossible 
for us to grasp the complete content of the 
Infinite’s plan and purpose will be readily 
admitted, and that fact, which in no sense 
can be designated a fault of the Absolute, 
calls for the patience of faith and a recogni- 
tion of the limitations of human reason. The 
solution of the problem of evil from the 
standpoint of reason and experience can not 
be consistently expected. The mind of the 
Master is the best preparation for an ap- 
proach to this enigma and an acceptance of 
the rightful authority of Christian faith. 

The rationalist ignores faith as unscien- 
tific and deals with spiritual verities about 
as the miller deals with grain. He forgets 
that he is dealing with questions which have 
eternal relations as well as present-day ap- 
plications. Every act of moral freedom has 
an inner power and purpose, just as every 
seed has a latent life that demands respect 
not only for what it is, but for what it may 


302 


The Fact of Sin 


be, when Faith has planted it, Time devel- 
oped it, and Reason reaped its harvest. 

The shallow apology for a life of con- 
scious sinfulness is often concealed in the 
query, “Why did God create me with the 
possibility of sin?” This is a phase of self- 
justification which implies an accusation 
against the Divine Being who permits sin. 
There is no appreciation in it of the plan 
and purpose of the All-wise Creator. The 
possibility of moral obedience is inseparably 
united with the possibility of immoral dis- 
obedience. To establish the relationship of 
father and son demands much more than 
the great majority are capable of compre- 
hending. We play with words and use terms 
that are largely meaningless. It is essential 
that we possess that humility which precedes 
teachableness, if we are to know God and 
His purposes. 

Sin can never have any real meaning to 
us unless we have a true conception of di- 
vine holiness and a clear appreciation of 
what the Father is seeking to do for the in- 
dividual and for the race. We must get a 


The Fact In Conclusion 303 

vision of Him that will lift ns out of onr 
narrow thought and onr limited environment 
and cause us by the clear eye of faith to be- 
hold a new heaven and a new earth. This 
must live before us as the divinest of all 
realities. It must be a power that grips us 
and of which we may say “in it we live and 
move and have our being .’ ’ 

There can be no thought of arbitrary law 
or of unjust requirement in a system that 
insists on obedience to certain precepts that 
are an inherent part of the organism itself. 
The divine law of interpretation is stated in 
the words of the apostle, “The natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God : 
for they are foolishness unto him: neither 
can he know them, because they are spiritu- 
ally discerned.” We are asking no more 
than is demanded by the law of natural 
science, when we call for obedience to the 
laws of the spiritual kingdom. It is an un- 
alterable principle in mechanics that obedi- 
ence to the laws of the force must precede 
results. The kingdom of electricity is no 
less dogmatic in its demands than the king- 


304 


The Fact of Sin 


dom of spiritual revelation. Truths which 
belong to the higher realm of Spirit and 
faith can not consistently be made wholly 
amenable to the demands of human reason. 
The tests of mathematical science are not 
the tests of Christian experience. Love 
transcends logic as faith does reason. 

We have no cause to fear that the divine 
grant of freedom to man will ultimately 
frustrate the plan and purpose of the Infinite. 
“The evil,” says one, “bears in its own 
bosom the seeds of disunion and dissolution, 
and finds to this extent alike its curb and its 
corrective in itself. The good, on the other 
hand, has in itself a principle of life and in- 
corruptibility, and comes to the desired de- 
velopment through its very conflict with 
evil.” Thus the world, under the guidance 
of Omniscience, will culminate in the triumph 
not of the evil, but of the divinely good. This 
does not annul the possibility of the eternal 
rebellion of the sinner, but confirms the ulti- 
mate victory of truth and the subserviency 
of error. “The evil has its time; the good 
time and eternity before, since God and the 
good are one.” 


The Fact In Conclusion 


305 


The truth of the above statement is easily 
observed in the experience of history. Sin 
in time works out its own defeat by the very 
laws of the eternal and abiding. The mes- 
sage of the gospel as it is preached and lived 
hastens the triumph of the good and pre- 
cludes a part of the penalty of national and 
social prodigality. This beneficent and self- 
guarding government of God is so managed 
that the glory of individual freedom is not 
in any degree diminished. Moral freedom 
is the liberty of law. Divinity is ever over 
humanity — not in the sense of interference 
with the small things to the detriment of the 
great, or the triumph of the temporal to the 
retarding of the eternal, but in that larger 
wisdom of Him who knows the end from the 
beginning and whose plans we are permitted 
to know only in part. 

An attempted explanation of the method 
by which God is able to conserve human free- 
dom, and at the same time insure the per- 
petuity of His kingdom, is found in the fact 
that “when an individual experiences any- 
thing, be it pleasant or unpleasant, he is 
20 


306 


The Fact of Sin 


usually passive; where, on the other hand, 
when he effects something, he shows himself 
acting just as he chooses.” In his active 
life we find man a free moral agent, and it 
is here that character gains its moral value. 
In his passive moments a divinity shapes the 
rough-hewn life, and in accord with the mys- 
tery of Omniscience all things are made to 
work out good. 

The deeds of men “ which are either 
willed or permitted by God may still be re- 
garded as a part of His adorable plan. The 
natural evil, that of suffering, and the spir- 
itual evil, that of sin, both take place under 
God’s control, and the history of mankind 
becomes alike the work and ministry of His 
providence, without the freedom of the indi- 
vidual man being thereby annihilated.” 

We shall find a further help in our study 
of the problem of evil if we view it in the 
three phases of the general plan and as re- 
lated to the fulfillment of the divine purpose. 
“ According to the eternal purpose” is the 
final court of appeal for reason as well as 
faith. This conception of life finds its origin 


The Fact In Conclusion 307 

in revelation, but it is authenticated in his- 
tory and experience. A right attitude toward 
God must precede a correct understand- 
ing of man. The depreciation of present 
or primitive man is certain to lower our con- 
ception of his Creator. To assert that God 
made man a sinner is to deny the very at- 
tributes of His being, but to know that He 
created man moral and free is a justification 
of His goodness and wisdom. The fact of 
a holy Father and a sinless Son is a sufficient 
guarantee of the purity of primitive man and 
of the redemption of a fallen race. 

We may follow the outline suggested by 
Milton and designate our first picture “Par- 
adise.” The environment was Edenic and 
the ancestors innocent. The entire scene was 
designed and drawn by the Master Artist, 
who paints no imperfect pictures. It was 
not heaven, but man ’s ideal earthly home. It 
was natural life without any of the abnormal 
effects of sin. The fact that it was as the 
Creator made it gave it the vision of purity 
and the peace and joy of innocence. There 
was no guilt because there had as yel been 


308 


The Fact of Sin 


no transgression. There was no effort to 
hide from the good because there had been 
no experience of the evil. It satisfies the de- 
mand of faith that the work of the Father — 
although not perfect in the sense of developed 
character — was perfect in its freedom from 
sin. The goodness of God is thereby justified 
in Creation as well as in Redemption. The 
assertion of the naturalist, that it is more in 
harmony with present methods of growth to 
consider man an evolution than a direct cre- 
ation, carries with it the assumption that God 
either did not or could not make man as 
the Scripture of Truth records. So long as 
we do not care to supplant divine miracles by 
human hypotheses we are quite satisfied to 
accept the first picture as the author of Gen- 
esis describes it. 

The second picture we would present is 
called “Paradise Lost.” It is not wholly 
new. It is the first one marred and disfig- 
ured by the abuse of human freedom. It 
is not perfect, since it is not the work of the 
Father. We can not say that it is an evolu- 
tion or an improvement of the first. There 


The Fact In Conclusion 309 

is more experience portrayed in the dark 
lines, bnt it is clonded by the shadows of 
gnilt and sin. Man is the despoiler, and he 
has always retained the consciousness of his 
betrayed trust. This is the scene that is 
most difficult to understand. It is here that 
the critics of all the centuries have stood. 
The philosopher and scientist have both been 
baffled in their attempted explanations. 
Many have failed to properly distinguish be- 
tween the first and second, while others, hav- 
ing observed certain incidental analogies, 
have sought to combine the two by a denial 
of the first. Those who advocate the latter 
theory only eliminate the minor difficulties 
while they multiply the major portion of the 
problem. 

We may say this, as is said of the muti- 
lating of the masterpiece of Leonardo da 
Vinci at Milan, it was the work of an adver- 
sary. The true Artist painted the original, 
but the present discolored and marred can- 
vas, which contains but few of the marks of 
the original Genius, must be traced to an- 
other hand and heart. It is from the dis- 


310 


The Fact of Sin 


figured original that all the imperfect copies 
have been sketched. The world has not taken 
the time nor the care to look deep enough 
to discover the outline of the obscured pic- 
ture. The critics have been too superficial 
and their conclusions have been false to the 
real facts. They have come with self-con- 
structed theories, which have determined 
their viewpoints and biased their conclusions. 
We would not deny the reality of any part of 
the awful tragedy of sin, but we insist that 
a proper study of all the details will furnish 
a basis for a sound philosophy of faith in 
the guilt of man and the goodness of God. 

The third picture is that which we are 
pleased to call “ Paradise Regained.” To 
the unbelieving and indifferent it is the same 
scene as the second. To the evolutionist it 
is only an “unrealized hope,” which in some 
far distant age may gain realization. To 
many it is little more than the scene of a 
losing battle against an ever active enemy. 
To others the “very possibility” of the pic- 
ture is a sufficient excuse for disbelief and 
denial. We may state that the meaning of 


The Fact In Conclusion 


311 


the scene will depend very largely on onr 
attitude of mind and heart. Faith must 
come in to supplement reason, here as else- 
where, not because reason is not accounted 
reliable, but because it is not sufficient unto 
itself and needs a higher source of knowledge 
to assist in the complete interpretation. 

If we are to escape pessimism at the un- 
folding of so much of vice and criminality, 
we shall need to recognize the eternal gain 
of human sovereignty to those who use it 
properly, as well as the eternal loss to those 
who through all the years of entrusted proba- 
tion continue to betray the Father’s grant. 
To this we may add the promised power of 
Him who brings redemption and whose very 
existence is the pledge of sin’s defeat and 
“the burial hour of crime.” We. shall also 
need the purified vision that will enable us 
to behold again the Master Artist with one 
last bold stroke of love, so applying the blood 
of Calvary’s cross to the second picture as 
to cover every part of the enemy’s work and 
making the crimson and scarlet stains to be- 
come as white as wool and as pure as snow. 


312 


The Fact of Sin 


Shall we not hang these three pictures in 
the temple of onr faith? The first we may 
designate “Man in the Image of His Cre- 
ator ;” the second, “The Trust of Human 
Sovereignty Betrayed;” the third, “Divine 
Redemption, or Paradise Regained.” We 
shall find that the pre-eminence of Christ in 
daily experience will become the completing 
complement of our partially answered 
“why?” We shall bring the two pictures 
into such perfect stereoscopic harmony as to 
find in them our theodicy for the now-exist- 
ing second. Faith is our highest attitude of 
reason and we wait on wisdom and endure 
as seeing Him who is invisible. The Unseen 
becomes not only the life and soul of the 
seen, but the clear Interpreter of both. 













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